The California Teachers Association has put another $500,000 into its effort to overturn a trio of business tax breaks, setting the stage for a nasty November ballot battle.
While half a million dollars is probably way less than the “incremental investment” Republican Meg Whitman has promised to add to the $39 million she’s already spent on her campaign for governor, it’s a sign as to just how seriously public employees unions are taking this fall’s election.
That’s serious as in $2.2 million serious, which is how much the CTA has spent in its effort to qualify the repeal measure for the ballot.
The business community also is gearing up for a fight. On Wednesday, Amgen, a Southern California biotech company, became the ninth big-name business to write a $100,000 check to the “Stop the Jobs Tax” campaign.
The targets of the teachers’ initiative effort are three business-friendly tax measures the Legislature passed last year. The measures make technical changes to the corporate tax code that will, according to a argue that they’re fighting for the little guy.
Everyone needs to pay his or her fair share in these tough economic times, CTA President David Sanchez said when announcing the teacher support for the ballot measure. When big corporations are paying less, he added, middle-class families are paying more.
Lined up on the other side are companies like Disney, GE, Genentech, CBS, Cisco and Viacom. They argue that the tax changes not only are fair, but also allow the companies to keep expanding and creating jobs in California.
But that $2.2 million might only be the opening bid for the teachers and other public employee unions. The CTA and other labor groups have vowed to spend what it takes to fight another “paycheck protection” ballot measure, which conservative groups are trying to qualify for the November ballot.
The initiative, backed by a group called “Unplug the Machine,” is designed to trim the power of public employee unions by making it far more difficult for them to contribute money to political – and overwhelmingly Democratic – causes.
California voters have twice turned back similar efforts, voting down Prop. 226 in 1998 and Prop. 75 in the November 2005 special election. But the cost of victory wasn’t cheap, with opponents of the measures spending $23 million in 1998 and $43 million in 2005.
Backers of the new paycheck protection effort have until May 3 to collect the 694,354 signatures needed to put it on the ballot and they’re going to need more than the $100,000 they’ve raised so far to gather those needed signatures.
That’s why the CTA’s effort to repeal the 2009 tax breaks is actually a political twofer. Sure, those $500,000 checks are needed to get their corporate tax initiative on the ballot. But that flood of teacher money is also a reminder to conservative activists that if they’re going to take a ballot run at the public employee unions this November, they had better bring their checkbooks.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.