One Person, Two Seats of Power: An Embarrassing Ethics Failure

As many of you know, I write a monthly column in my local paper that I often share here too since so many of you live far away and won’t be picking up our free weekly paper at the grocery store or coffee shop. This piece below ran here last week in The Valley Breeze. As you read, you’ll see that the problem goes far beyond my tiny state.

In a state where cronyism and ethical lapses are the norm, the head of the most powerful teachers’ union in the state just became the most powerful lawmaker in one of my state’s three branches of government. Val Lawson, the current president of the National Education Association (NEA) of Rhode Island recently became the President of the Senate.

Rhode Island has managed to hit a new low.

A sitting union president shouldn’t be in the senate at all because of the glaring conflicts of interest. And those conflicts only got worse when she became the senate majority leader, a role that gave her immense sway over legislation, budgets, and policy priorities. But now, in the wake of the senate president’s death in office, she has ascended to the presidency of the senate, while also leading a powerful union that directly lobbies the body over which she now presides. To put it more simply it’s like being the head referee of a football game and also the coach of one of the teams.

Despite its tiny size, Rhode Island has again punched way above its weight in being an ethical farce.

Commitment to ethics can’t be partisan even when a state is completely run by one party. And it’s not about being pro-union or anti-union. The same people who are shrugging off this obvious conflict of interest, should consider how they’d feel if an NRA president or big pharma lobbyist became the senate president. The outrage would be instant and the coverage would likely be much more aggressive. How have we gotten to a point that a teachers’ union boss becoming the most powerful senator in the state is no big deal?

Admittedly, we aren’t alone when it comes to union executives embedding themselves in the state apparatus —this trend is ascendant in blue cities and states where one party rule and union power have brought us to a Thelma and Louise moment of elected officials driving the education of our children off a cliff if it in exchange for proximity to power.

In New Jersey, the current president of the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), Sean Spiller, is running for governor and a brand new Super PAC staffed up with former NJEA executives has promised $35 million to support his candidacy. Rank and file NJEA members will likely be footing that bill, even though they probably don’t know it yet. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson, who began working for the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) in 2011, is still officially on “union leave” from the Chicago Public Schools. It’s all so brazen.

It is striking (no pun intended) that the same people who rightly highlight the need for checks and balances in government seem to be looking the other way as a RI union boss consolidates power in two conflicting roles. This tells me that Rhode Island’s political culture is too compromised, too clubby, and too comfortable living in the pocket of the unions.

There’s a reason we have conflict-of-interest laws and ethics commissions (however feckless they may seem most of the time). They exist because we understand that no one can serve two masters. You cannot represent a statewide labor union whose job is to pressure lawmakers while also being the lawmaker who decides which bills move forward and which ones die in committee. It is unrealistic to expect Val Lawson—or anyone—to negotiate fair and wise policy for the public when your day job depends on a specific outcome.