GOVERNMENT
WHEN WILL IT OPEN? Spokane voters want union bargaining done publicly, but COVID and a court case have delayed open negotiations
Negotiations with the Spokane police union have been ongoing since 2017. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL
I
n November 2019, a whopping 77 percent of Spokane city voters agreed that union negotiations with public employees should, in fact, be public and not conducted behind closed doors. A few things have happened since then that have kept such deal-making shrouded from public view. For starters, just a few months after that key vote, a global pandemic broke out, throwing a wrench in in-person public meetings everywhere (though virtual solutions have been adopted). Secondly, local efforts to make bargaining public first started in neighboring Lincoln County, which quickly saw a lawsuit from one of its major unions to block the move. That court case is still ongoing, and until either the public commission that rules on collective bargaining provides clear guidance for open negotiations or the state Supreme Court takes up the case, government agencies and unions are keeping a watchful eye. Regardless of those challenges, Spokane city leaders are being urged to open up its contract negotiations this year. In a Jan. 11 letter to city officials, a group of business leaders, the conservative-leaning Washington Policy Center and the president of the Washington Coalition
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for Open Government argued that bargaining should be open to the public. “Since government union contracts account for such a large portion of spending, they should not be negotiated in secret,” the letter states. “It is predictable that union leadership would resist such a change. If they continue to resist, the city of Spokane should simply proceed as required in the charter — publish a public offer to the union(s) and await a response.” Otherwise, the letter also warns, “Failure to comply with the city charter, in violation of your oath, could open the city up to further legal action.” Labor leaders, meanwhile, continue to argue that this supposed effort at transparency is really a thinly veiled attempt to hurt and undermine unions. And with COVID restrictions and legal uncertainty looming, it remains to be seen if city leadership and union representatives will be able to agree to ground rules for the first three contracts subject to the new rule in a way that gives the public a seat at the table, virtual or not.
TENSE LETTERS
The Washington Policy Center-led letter came partly in response to a letter that Chris Dugovich, executive director
of the Washington State Council of County and City Employees, sent to Spokane County and the city in December. That state council represents Local 270, the city of Spokane’s largest union, with close to 1,000 workers who do everything from engineering and administrative work to sewage treatment and refuse driving. In the letter, however, Dugovich specifically takes issue with the county, lamenting that Spokane County correctional officers, under another part of his union, have worked throughout the pandemic without a contract since the end of 2019. Similar to the city of Spokane, the county also passed a requirement that bargaining with unions be moved into the public, but unlike the city, which put that measure to voters, the county measure was approved solely by County Commissioners Josh Kerns and Al French. “The Union has relentlessly for over a year tried to have substantive negotiations but have only been met by a flat-out refusal to bargain,” Dugovich writes. “This letter is in hopes that both the City and the County return and continue to bargaining (sic) in good faith. Failure to do so may mean that the bar room brawl just may break out to the streets.” ...continued on page 10
