Room for Debate: The Public Pension Problem
Bring Financial Managers in House
The New York Times - December 5, 2013, by Connie Razza - This past year, investment management fees on New York City...
The New York Times - December 5, 2013, by Connie Razza - This past year, investment management fees on New York City pensions increased 28 percent. Over the past seven years, they have more than doubled to $472.5 million annually. The city pays very high fees even in years when the funds lose value.
Internal control of pension fund assets for public workers will help rebalance a city's relationship with Wall Street.
These fees unduly burden the funds and add to the uncertainty with which our city's retired and current employees face the future. The rapid rise in pension fund fees is just one of many symptoms of our badly broken financial system, which fails to serve the broader economy and promote general prosperity. Instead, it promotes and exacerbates inequality. As part of the New Day New York Coalition, the Center for Popular Democracy has proposed a sweeping solution. New York should create a highly skilled in-house financial management team for pension fund assets. Even with salaries high enough to attract top quality managers, the city would not pay the typical "2 percent of assets under management, plus 20 percent of profits" that hedge funds, private-equity firms and real-estate firms typically charge. The profit motive of in-house managers will be fully aligned with city employees and they will be better situated to ensure that investments are financially responsible, contributing to our broader economy and to the funds' bottom line. The creation of the in-house financial team would save the pension funds hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As significant a change as this would be, it is an idea that the city's former chief investment officer has advocated, and that incoming city comptroller Scott Stringer has expressed interest in. Also, pension funds in Alaska, California, Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada, already do this, to varying degrees. All of these funds also rely on outside managers for some of their investments, but insourcing much of the pension investment management would give the city funds meaningful leverage when working with outside management firms. Building an internal capacity to manage the pension fund assets of city workers is an important step toward rebalancing the city's relationship with Wall Street.
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Nueva York mantiene su promesa de apoyar a víctimas de María
Nueva York mantiene su promesa de apoyar a víctimas de María
Julio López Varona, director de campañas del Centro para la Democracia Popular (CPD), destacó que aunque es cierto que el Gobierno federal no ha tratado a los damnificados con ninguna...
Julio López Varona, director de campañas del Centro para la Democracia Popular (CPD), destacó que aunque es cierto que el Gobierno federal no ha tratado a los damnificados con ninguna consideración y ha fallado en su obligaciones, la responsabilidad de velar por el bienestar de las víctimas cae en el Estado y los municipios donde ahora residen, por lo que exigió más acciones.
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Lax Pa. Oversight of Charters Robs Taxpayers of $30M, Groups Say
Philadelphia Inquirer - October 1, 2014, by Martha Woodall - A new report from a trio of activist groups says Pennsylvania charter schools have defrauded taxpayers of more than $30 million because...
Philadelphia Inquirer - October 1, 2014, by Martha Woodall - A new report from a trio of activist groups says Pennsylvania charter schools have defrauded taxpayers of more than $30 million because oversight is so lax.
The researchers call for a temporary moratorium on new charter schools, contending agencies are not able to adequately monitor the 186 charters that already exist.
The study by the Center for Popular Democracy; Integrity in Education; and Action United of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh was to be released Wednesday.
The report urges the state Attorney General's Office to review all Pennsylvania charters for potential fraud. It asks the legislature to require charters to undergo regular fraud-risk assessments and fraud audits. And it suggests that until the law is changed to require such actions, charters should voluntarily undergo them and make the findings public.
Researchers said most of the $30 million in fraud that has been detected since the state's charter law was passed in 1997 was not uncovered by charter-oversight offices but by whistle-blowers and the media, including The Inquirer. They said the total amount of misspent funds was likely far larger.
"The current oversight system in Pennsylvania falls miserably short when it comes to detecting, preventing, and eliminating fraud," said Kyle Serrette, education director at the Center for Popular Democracy in Washington.
The center receives funding from foundations, including $990,000 this year from the Ford Foundation. It also receives a small amount of support from teachers' unions, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, is on the organization's board.
Robert Fayfich, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, said that while his group supports accountability, the report makes "sweeping conclusions about the entire charter sector based on only 11 cited incidents in the course of almost 20 years."
". . . Fraud and fiscal mismanagement are wrong and cannot be tolerated, but to highlight them in one sector and ignore them in another indicates a motivation to target one type of public school for a political agenda," he said in a statement.
Pennsylvania school districts paid $1.5 million to charters that enrolled 128,712 students in 2012-13. More than 67,000 Philadelphia students attend 86 city charters.
Sabrina Stevens, executive director of Washington-based Integrity in Education, said: "With over $1 billion going to charter schools in Pennsylvania, it's time for charter schools to be held to the same standards of transparency and oversight that public schools are held to."
State Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said it's "good that they put this together," adding that Serrette's group had testified at a charter-oversight hearing his office held in March. "To me, the more voices on this, the better. I think in the next term in the legislature, there is going to be a charter-reform bill move forward."
City Controller Alan Butkovitz said the report echoed concerns he raised in 2010, when his office released its own oversight study that highlighted several problems his office found at city charters.
"We certainly agree with the need for greater oversight and auditing," Butkovitz said. "That's been one of our constant themes."
The instances of fraud cited in the new report include cases where charter officials were indicted or pleaded guilty and instances uncovered in state audits.
Examples include Nicholas Trombetta, founder and former CEO of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School in Midland, who is awaiting federal trial in Pittsburgh on charges that he diverted $8 million in school funds for personal use.
The tally also includes $6.3 million that federal prosecutors allege Dorothy June Brown defrauded from the four Philadelphia-area charters she founded.
But the authors give special attention to another recent case involving a city charter: New Media Technology Charter School in the city's Stenton section. The former CEO and founding board president went to federal prison in 2012 after admitting they stole $522,000 in taxpayer money to prop up a restaurant, a health-food store, and a private school they controlled, and for defrauding a bank.
From 2005 to 2009, when the crimes were occurring, third-party auditors hired by New Media failed to spot the fraudulent payments.
"Fraud detection in Pennsylvania charter schools should not be dependent upon parent complaints, media exposés, and whistle-blowers," the authors wrote. Rather, they urged, the system should be proactive and use forensic accounting methods.
According to the report, Pennsylvania's charters are vulnerable to fraud and financial mismanagement because school districts and state offices charged with overseeing them lack resources and staff.
For example, although the cash-strapped Philadelphia district has about half of the state's charters, it has only two auditors and a small office to monitor 86 schools, the report said.
"We agree in the need of greater oversight and a deeper look into the health of charter schools," district spokesman Fernando Gallard said, "and we have taken steps to do so."
Although the district's charter office at times had only two or three staffers, Gallard said, it now has six and is seeking an executive director.
Researchers also said that charters lack strong internal fiscal controls and that their boards have not adopted strict management policies.
And even though the charters are required to have annual audits performed by outside firms, researchers said, those audits rely on general accounting techniques and are not designed to detect fraud.
"The current system of oversight relies heavily on information provided by charter schools themselves and traditional audits that are designed to check accuracy rather than detect and prevent fraud," the report said.
The report said taxpayers cannot afford to lose another $30 million in misspent charter funds. "While the reforms proposed will require additional resources," the authors said, "they represent a smart investment in our communities and in our future."
Researchers said the study was the first in what would be a state-by-state investigation of oversight of charters in the 42 states that have them.
Serrette said researchers decided to begin with Pennsylvania because the timing seemed right. He pointed out that both DePasquale in Harrisburg and Butkovitz in Philadelphia have highlighted the fraud risks in charter schools. And State Rep. James R. Roebuck Jr. (D., Phila.), minority chairman of the House Education Committee, introduced a bill last year to tighten charter controls.
Said Serrette: "The stars are aligning."
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Americans for Democratic Action Hosts Philly Charter School Forum: Who’s Minding the Store?
Weekly Press - December 17, 2014, by Nicole Contosta - Charter Schools have become a divisive issue in Philadelphia. Supporters swear to their...
Weekly Press - December 17, 2014, by Nicole Contosta - Charter Schools have become a divisive issue in Philadelphia. Supporters swear to their effectiveness. Critics argue that they lack accountability.
Both sides of the charter school debate were heard last Tuesday, December 9th. That’s when the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), hosted the Philly Charter School Forum: Who’s Minding the Store?
Panelists included Feather Houstoun from the Philadelphia School Reform Commission (SRC); Jurate Krokys, founding principal of the Independence Charter School, Kyle Serette of the Center for Popular Democracy and author of Fraud and Financial Mismanagement in PA’s Charter Schools; and Barbara Dowdall, retired public school teacher and former ADA board member.
Solomon Leach, Philadelphia Daily News Education Reporter, moderated. Leach began the evening’s discourse by asking Houstoun to comment on the evolution of charter schools in Philadelphia.
Houstoun, who spent most of her career in managing care, transit and welfare problems, cited her experience with "good oversight." But when Houstoun joined the SRC three and half years ago, "I was really surprised […] about the incredibly precarious situation the school district was in. Now," Houstoun continued, "we’re living within our means, but we’re horrifically under-resourced."
And with regard to charter schools, Houstoun said, "I was really dumbfounded by how badly over the course of time the [Philadelphia School] District had organized itself to assure that we were getting good value for children in charter schools."
To Houstoun, getting good value for the city’s children proves relevant given the fact that "40 percent of our children are being educated at charter schools that are separate from the district apparatus."
But, Houstoun continued, "We must accept responsibility for these things." And in Houstoun’s opinion, part of the problem resulted from the fact that "the District did not set up standards for academic performances. There were no systematic annual check-ups about what they were doing in terms of finance, corporate or academic measures."
Houstoun cited the fact that the SRC only renews charter schools on a five-year basis as contributing to the lack of oversight. However, at the same time, Houstoun expressed optimism when it comes to moving forward with the city’s charter schools. Over the past year, the SRC performed an overhaul of the charter school office, placing Julian Thompson at the helm. "We’re operating within charter school law that gives us the obligation to monitor and review charter schools," Houstoun emphasized.
From the charter school perspective, Krokys said that she hasn’t always had the best experience working with the SRC.
"I’ve been in the charter world for about 14 years," Krokys said, "In the past and sometimes the not so recent past—what it was—the relationship and the process of authorization and renewal were secret, haphazard, and hostile. And I’m not exaggerating. It was always up for grabs."
In answering Leach’s question about what she’s learned from really effective charter schools, Krokys said, "Community partners and stakeholders are one of the things that can be done with all schools—but it’s especially important for charter schools. Site admission selection for parents and staff—there’s nothing like feeling that you have chosen something and were not defaulted to it," Krokys stressed. "That makes a big difference in partnership.
The same thing," Krokys continued, "goes for staff. The staff is not assigned; they’re not grazing until they get their retirement. Staff is selected to work in a specific school."
Serette discussed the history and evolution of charter schools. That began on March 31, 1988. "That’s when our chamber got in front of the press club in DC and announced a new type of school, something that would help figure out the most complicated problems in our education system. And it was the charter school."
As Serette explained it, the charter school concept was designed as a "calculated risk to figure out if we could figure out something that could then be exported into the public system. And," Serette continued, "This makes sense because you don’t want to take a calculated risk and export it into the whole system. I think we forgot that lesson as we were expanding throughout the nation.
We have a situation where we have the largest charter school system in the country-K12 Inc.," Serette continued, "It’s fully funded by public dollars but it’s traded on the stock exchange. The goal of being on the exchange is to make money. So we have slightly diverged from the original mission of charters."
With regard to the effectiveness of charter schools, "they have had a meaningful impact," Serette said, adding, "They have taught us some really smart things to figure out and export to our system. The first charter school started in 1992. And now we have 43 states with charter school laws."
But, Serette noted, citing an investigation of 15 states, his office found, "about 136 million in charter school funding that was abused, that was used for fraud. To us, that was an alarming number."
In PA, Serette explained that he didn’t think the state government "did a great job of regulating the system. So we have here, two auditors looking after a system that has revenue of 700 million, auditing 86 charter schools.
Dowdall, in answering Leach’s question about academic accountability for charter schools said, "Rather than start with the charter school in the quest of academic accountability, we might journey back to the government entities that established, regulates and monitors them namely the PA State Legislature the Governor of PA, the State Department of Education and the SRC.
While the public schools whose assumed inadequacies sparked the takeover," Dowdall continued, "they were more or less placed in a giant petri dish; we more or less organized a dizzying away of name changes, administrative changes, etc. Test prep came to rule and push out libraries, librarians, music, art and other extra curricular activities. Funding cuts led to the disappearance of nurses, counselors, teaching assistants, custodial help and the financial oversight provided by operations personnel.
Twenty three neighborhood schools," Dowdall continued, "were shuttered. And 40 new charters are supposed to open. Since the SRC has the authority to approve schools," Dowdall said, "maybe they should do so based on the actual needs of the district rather than the whims and desires in some highly funded charters."
As the discussion continued, Leach asked Houstoun "how has the introduction [of reversing] no-charter re-imbursement in PA influence the SRC assessment when it comes to renewing charters?"
Leach’s question references the fact that Government Corbett eliminated the $100 million for charter school re-imbursement to the Philadelphia School District in 2011.
Houston cited the cancellation of the re-imbursement as painful. "For every child that’s added to charter school system, we can’t take off $10,000 for expenses. If," Houstoun explained, "we can restore the charter re-imbursement that was in place, it would alleviate the first level of pain that we’re suffering in the district right now."
Leach asked Krokys to comment on how to rectify the public perception of charter schools when taking into account those that are underperforming or fraudulent.
Krokys began her answering by stressing, "There are thousands and thousands of children who would not have had one chance in their neighborhood school. And a lot of them came through my doors and are now graduating from college."
When it comes to addressing inadequacies in Philadelphia charter schools, Krokys said, "It took a while for the charter school community to finally say, ‘yes. There are some charters that need be closed.’ Yes," Krokys said, "we are weary of the few bad apples because that’s what ends up in the papers. And that’s what ends up tainting everything else."
With regard to K12 Inc., "Who the hell gave permission for a for-profit to run a charter school?" Krokys asked. "Whose fault was that?"
To Serette, Leach asked, "One of the original aims of charter schools was to be a model for public schools. But that got lost in the shuffle over time. How do you think we can go back so that public schools can benefit from the successful roles of charters?"
According to Serette, "The narrative in the US is that the public school system is broken, right? And you can’t just get a good education so you have to be saved by a lot of other systems. But the truth is," Serette continued. "We have a good public school system in upper class and upper middle class neighborhoods. Those tend to be wonderful. And then you have the struggling sectors where people can’t make ends meet and we’re trying to figure that out."
Leach then asked Dowdall how charter and public schools could reach a middle ground.
To Dowdall, "It’s about equity. It’s about resources. Whether it’s traditional or charter, it can be defined. It’s about small classes with libraries where the students can be guided."
And in Dowdall’s opinion, "There needs to be an agreement between those on the board that authorization renewal for charter schools should be set at three years as opposed to five."
For more information on the ADA, visit Youth http://www.phillyada.org.
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A Campaign for Full Employment, and the Federal Reserve
A Campaign for Full Employment, and the Federal Reserve
Fed Up Field Director Shawn Sebastian with the Center for Popular Democracy joins us to talk about their campaign pushing the Federal Reserve to adopt pro-worker policies, keeping interest rates...
Fed Up Field Director Shawn Sebastian with the Center for Popular Democracy joins us to talk about their campaign pushing the Federal Reserve to adopt pro-worker policies, keeping interest rates low, and how they re getting public support to build a better economy.
CHARLES SHOWALTER AND SHAWN SEBASTIAN
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Lingo still a barrier to relief
Times Union – August 7, 2013, by Jimmy Vielkind - Immigrant advocacy groups say it remains difficult to get access to government services in languages other than English — nearly two years after...
Times Union – August 7, 2013, by Jimmy Vielkind - Immigrant advocacy groups say it remains difficult to get access to government services in languages other than English — nearly two years after Gov. Andrew Cuomo decreed that written and oral interpretation would be available the state’s six most-spoken foreign languages.
Cuomo signed an executive order that took effect last October mandating state officials to offer language assistance for speakers of Spanish, French, Italian, French Creole, Russian and Chinese. But the order’s scope was necessarily limited to state agencies, even though state-funded services like food stamps, driver’s licenses and unemployment benefits are administered by New York City or other counties.
The groups — including Make the Road New York, the Center for Popular Democracy and the Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities at the University at Albany — visited government offices and surveyed people with limited English proficiency to develop a measure of compliance. In a report released earlier this week, they found that less than half the people who needed language assistance were able to receive it.
According to Nisha Agarwal, deputy director of the Center for Popular Democracy, the survey found 63 percent of citizens using state-operated facilities that are explicitly covered by the order were not successful in their quest to gain language assistance.
“The governor’s team has been very engaged on implementation, and we’re sympathetic to the challenges of getting an entire state apparatus to change,” said Agarwal. “That said, the results are by no means satisfactory, and we were quite disappointed that the state took the position that county-run agencies for state services were not within the ambit of the order. We feel it’s a pretty big gap.”
The Cuomo administration responded by saying that all covered state agencies are in compliance with this executive order
“This report paints an inaccurate picture of reality by relying on visits to county-run agencies that by law fall outside the executive order,” said Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi. “Everyone should have the same access to their government, and we encourage counties to follow the state’s lead.”
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5 Reasons Billionaire GOP Donor and Public School Privatizer Betsy DeVos Should Not Be Secretary of Education
Billionaire Betsy DeVos, a major GOP funder and party activist from Michigan, has been tapped by Donald Trump to become the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education and faces a Senate...
Billionaire Betsy DeVos, a major GOP funder and party activist from Michigan, has been tapped by Donald Trump to become the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education and faces a Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
Many have decried the choice as a looming disaster for public schools in America, with NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia observing that DeVos' "efforts over the years have done more to undermine public education than support students. She has lobbied for failed schemes, like vouchers--which take away funding and local control from our public schools--to fund private schools at taxpayers' expense."
Randi Weingarten, the president of AFT, stated that "Betsy DeVos is everything Donald Trump said is wrong in America--an ultra-wealthy heiress who uses her money to game the system and push a special-interest agenda that is opposed by the majority of voters. Installing her in the Department of Education is the opposite of Trump's promise to drain the swamp."
The choice signals the President-elect's intention to put the expansion of taxpayer-funded charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools at the center of his national agenda on education.
Through her riches, Betsy DeVos has had a disproportionate influence on national and state policies affecting millions of Americans, helping to force through changes to the law that gut the rights of workers and redirect American tax dollars to fund risky charter school experiments that have repeatedly failed for America's children.
She has also applauded efforts to gut election laws that are designed to prevent corruption, recasting the issue of money in politics as free speech and her right to speak "as loudly as we please." (Her remarks about this and her praise for Tom DeLay's "honesty" begin at the 52-minute mark here.)
Here are five facts to get smart about who Betsy DeVos is and what her nomination could mean for America.
1. Betsy DeVos Refused to Send Her Children to Public Schools in Grand Rapids, Michigan.Betsy and her husband Dick DeVos, Jr., have four children they raised in the prosperous town of Ada, Michigan, which is the headquarters of AmWay, the multi-level marketing company that made the DeVos family billionaires. She is also an heir to the Prince Corporation fortune from sun visors and other car parts.
The public elementary, middle, and high school in Ada, a suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan, are highly ranked, but she did not send her children to public schools. She has said that her two daughters were home-schooled for a number of years.
Instead of sending their children to public schools, for nearly three decades, Betsy and Dick have focused on pushing vouchers for private schools and bankrolling politicians to advance their agenda to redirect American tax dollars away from truly public schools.
2. She Retained a Convicted Felon to Lobby for Her Wish List of Education Reforms (and There Are Other Scandals).In 2004, Betsy DeVos hired Scott Jensen to aid the legislative agenda of her group "American Federation for Children" (AFC), a 501(c)(4) arm of Alliance for School Choice, her 501(c)3), which push so-called education reform measures.
The problem is that in 2002, Jensen had been charged with three felonies and a misdemeanor for misconduct in office--for illegally using his office as the Republican Assembly Speaker to direct that state employees to perform campaign work at public expense. He and the others who were charged challenged the reach of state statutes in court through various appeals from 2002 through 2004, but they lost their efforts to prevent criminal trials.
But, the fact that Jensen was charged with felonies for misusing public tax dollars for partisan political purposes did not deter Betsy DeVos from hiring him in 2004 to advance her personal agenda to change American schools on behalf of AFC.
In 2005, he was tried in state court and convicted on all counts. The presiding judge told Jensen "what you did was a great wrong to the citizens of this state" because "You used your power and your influence to run an illegal campaign funding operation." The judge sentenced Jensen to five years, including 15 months of confinement along with supervised release.
That conviction and public condemnation did not end Jensen's job for Betsy DeVos. Jensen appealed his conviction, and he also lost his office in the legislature, but he had a job with DeVos.
For the next five years, Jensen was a convicted felon and DeVos' point person in pushing her school choice agenda in the states.
In 2010, after changes in the judiciary, Jensen won an appeal of his conviction and agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor crime to settle the case.
His conviction for that crime also had no impact on DeVos' decision to keep him on to push school choice.
Accordingly, perhaps it should come as no surprise that while all that was going on, another DeVos family school choice PAC was fined for $5.2 million by the Ohio Elections Board in 2008 for circumventing Ohio campaign finance laws. It was the largest fine for violating election laws in state history.
Do the ends justify the means for Betsy DeVos?
3. DeVos Has Pushed Policies Cloaked as "Choice" that Undermine Public Schools in Michigan and Nationwide.Her particular area of interest is the deregulation and privatization of the education system, initially through the introduction of education "vouchers."
The primary organizations that DeVos has bankrolled to carry out these policy goals are the dark money group, American Federation for Children (AFC), which is a 501(c)(4), and its affiliated 501(c)(3) nonprofit group, Alliance for School Choice. These groups have become major contributors to the right-wing corporate education reform echo chamber.
AFC describes itself as "creating an education revolution" through what is described as "school choice," via vouchers (tax dollars spent on private schools including religious schools), tax credits, and non-taxable "Education Savings Accounts."
AFC has gone through several evolutions since its 1998 founding including name changes. Some of these changes occurred after political controversies such as violations of campaign finance laws in Ohio and Wisconsin, as noted above.
AFC is and always has been a very important player in local state and national politics, helping to strongly support Republican candidates who move her education privatization agenda forward.
For example, AFC invested heavily in Wisconsin's recall elections to protect its political allies, including Republican Governor Scott Walker. Since 2010, AFC has spent at least $4.5 million on independent expenditures and issue ads in Wisconsin. This amount doesn't include the individual donations given by members of the DeVos family, or any spending on dark money groups trying to influence the elections without disclosing their donors.
AFC also aggressively promotes the school privatization agenda via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), where Jensen has represented AFC's lobbying agenda.
ALEC, describes itself as a voluntary association of state legislators but it operates as a corporate bill mill where the corporations that fund most of ALEC's operations and where corporate lobbyists and special interest representatives get an "equal voice and vote" with elected officials to approve "model" bills without the press or public present. AFC has been a "trustee" level sponsor of ALEC and is a member of ALEC's Education Task Force.
AFC works alongside ALEC to push so-called "model bills" promoting "school choice" and tax changes to subsidize private schools. Essentially, both ALEC and AFC want that national priority to be expanded funding for charter schools, which defunds truly public schools.
The nomination of Betsy DeVos to be the head of the Department of Education is a clear sign that the nation is about to embark on a dangerously extreme national experiment in the privatization of our education system that could deal a death blow to our public schools as we have known them.
There's little doubt that DeVos would use her power to undermine one of America's greatest innovations that helped make our country and economy so strong in the 20th century--quality public schools--and instead, use the idea of 'reform' to further subsidize private schools along with for-profit companies and non-profits operating charter schools.
The expansion of charters has marched forward despite the fact that fly-by-night charter operators that have committed more than $200 million dollars in fraud and waste in recent years, as documented by the Center for Popular Democracy.
Some of that expansion has occurred through for-profit companies, like K12 Inc., getting tax dollars for so-called "virtual schools," to operate as charters or as part of the public school system.
Dick DeVos, in a joint interview with Betsy DeVos, noted that he "commended to homeschoolers to consider is check out K12... Bill Bennett reviews the K12 personally, ... it's very consistent with our Christian world view..."
Like Betsy DeVos' AFC, K12 has had a seat and vote on ALEC's Education Task Force, and K12 has a seat on ALEC's corporate board. K12 has paid its CEO millions in stock in the company, whose revenues come overwhelmingly from public school budgets. CMD has called one of the leaders of K12 the highest paid "teacher" in America.
As the Center for Media and Democracy has detailed, the federal government has spent nearly $4 billion in tax dollars on the charter school experiment advanced by DeVos and other billionaires, like the Kochs and the Walton family.
CMD has also documented how charter schools in the DeVos backyard of Michigan have been embroiled in fraud and scandal, and how the state has even received federal tax dollars for charters that never even opened. That does not include the nearly $1 billion state spending that the Detroit Free Press has documented have gone to charters in that state.
4. Theocracy: She Has Pushed for Vouchers and More to Get Tax Money to Support Christian Schools.DeVos has approached the issue of education as a religious issue for her personally and as an area which she wants to change the law to reflect her personal views. A long-time partisan activist, she got involved in education "reform" in the early 1990s, around the time that her husband ran for a seat on the Michigan state Board of Education.
After he stepped down from that post, in 1993 she and her husband took on the "Education Freedom Fund," which, she has said, "I would define as ultimately Christian in its nature because in excess of 90% of the parents who receive these scholarships choose Christian schools to go to." EFF provides private funding for private school tuition, and is supported with significant donations from the DeVos family.
Why did she and here husband choose to get involved in the political battles over public education even though they did not send their kids to public schools and they financially support private Christian schools?
In a joint interview for "The Gathering," a group focused on advancing Christian ideology through philanthropy, she and her husband said they decided to focus on reforming public education and funding for private education because the "Lord led us there" and "God led us."
At that meeting, they were asked if it would not have been simpler to fund Christian schools directly rather than fund political efforts like vouchers to get more tax dollars to fund Christian schools, and she replied: "There are not enough philanthropic dollars in America to fund what is currently the need in education versus what is spent every year on education in this country... So, our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God's Kingdom," adding that they want "to impact our culture [in ways] that may have great Kingdom gain in the long-run by changing the way we approach things."
Her husband added: "We are working .... to allow for our Christian worldview, which for us comes from a Calvinist tradition, and to provide for a more expanded opportunity someday for all parents to be able to educate their children in a school that reflects their world view and not each day sending their child to a school that may be reflecting a world view that may be quite antithetical to the worldview they hold in their families."
When asked if they are "against public education," they have denied that charge while trying to reframe the conversation.
Betsy DeVos responded: "No, we are for good education and for having every child have an opportunity for a good education. And having grown up in families that are in the business world, we both believe that competition and choices make everyone better, and that ultimately if the system that prevails in the United States today had more competition, if there were other choices for people to make freely that all of the schools would become better as a result and that excellence would be sought in every setting. So we are very strong proponents of fundamentally changing the way we approach education ... because there are hundreds of thousands and millions of children that are forced to go every day to a school that is not meeting their needs and it's not right."
Her husband added that they are for "public education" but that's not the same as "public schools." He said public funding for education of all kinds is a "laudable concept" that should not be forced to operate through "government-run schools."
He also stated: "In my opinion, the Church has sadly retrenched from its central role in our community, to where now as we look at many communities in our country the church which ought to be in our view far more central to the life in our community has been displaced by the public school as the center for activity the center for what goes on the community...."
He added, "it is certainly our hope that churches would continue no matter what the environment whether there is government funding someday through vouchers or tax credits or some other mechanism...that more and more churches will get more and more active and engaged in education. We just can think of no better way to rebuild our families and our communities than to have that circle of church, school, and family much more tightly focused and being built on a consistent world view."
Betsy DeVos did not disagree with this statement of their shared goals and responded: "If I can just add to that very quickly, I think for many years the church in general has felt that it is important for the children of the congregation to be in the schools to make a difference but in fact I think what has happened in many cases for the last couple of decades is that the schools have impacted the kids more than the kids have impacted the schools. The young children need to have a pretty solid foundation to be able to combat the kind of influences that they are presented with on a daily basis."
(All quotes above are transcribed from their hour-long interview for "The Gathering," available here.)
5. She Bragged that Her Family Was the Biggest GOP Funder of "Soft Money," Plus They Have Funneled Millions in Dark Money.Betsy DeVos has used her family fortune to distort public policy to suit her personal agenda through direct donations and dark money because, in her own words, she wants a "return on our investment."
The DeVos family is a major funder of the Republican party. In a 1997 op-ed that DeVos wrote for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, she pointedly admitted, "my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican party." She also said that she decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that they were buying influence and simply concede the point, admitting "we expect a return on our investment," to make America reflect their vision for it.
DeVos has served as chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and was the finance chairwoman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
In addition to the disclosed and undisclosed political spending for controversial politicians like Tom DeLay--whom Betsy DeVos has called one of the most honest men in politics--the DeVos family through the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation has been a major funder of many extreme socially conservative organizations such as the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family and Coral Ridge Ministries.
The DeVos family fortune funds pro-education privatization, anti-union and pro-school voucher groups.
In 2011 alone, the DeVos foundation gave $3 million to David Koch's Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group created and funded by the Koch Brothers. The DeVos Foundation gave another $2.5 million to the Koch conduit DonorsTrust from 2009 to 2010.
The DeVos foundation has also contributed millions of dollars to other right wing organizations such as the State Policy Network, Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, FreedomWorks, Federalist Society, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and others.
Betsy and Dick DeVos were featured at a meeting of the ALEC sibling group, the State Policy Network, which gave its highest award in 2014 to the Mackinac Center for pushing the misnamed "right to work" bill into law in Michigan, even though that think tank has claimed to the IRS that it engages in no lobbying.
Their fortune has helped to underwrite Mackinac's operations and agenda, which has included expanding powers for emergency managers to replace elected officials, which helped create the conditions for the Flint, Michigan, tragedy of kids being poisoned by lead in their water, as CMD has detailed in a history of those provision.
In 2015, DeVos money also helped fund the push for adoption of a statewide religious freedom restoration act, or RFRA law, that awards adoption agencies in Michigan the right to claim a religious exemption from having to serve LGBTQ couples. Both the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation and the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation gave money to Bethany Christian Services, which lobbied hard for passage of the controversial RFRA.
Recently, the DeVos family also helped fund two pieces of extreme state legislation in Michigan. The state preemption bill, dubbed the "death star," HB 4052, passed by the legislature in 2015 bans cities from enacting their own laws governing wages and benefits. In one fell swoop, the law preempted local regulation of nine wage and benefit policies ranging from minimum wage to worker training and organizing.
By Lisa Graves
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Let's Choose Children Over the Charter Industry
Roll Call - May 14, 2014, by Kyle Serrette and Sabrina Joy Stevens - Our children are too precious, and education funding too scarce, to risk turning either over to unscrupulous or incompetent...
Roll Call - May 14, 2014, by Kyle Serrette and Sabrina Joy Stevens - Our children are too precious, and education funding too scarce, to risk turning either over to unscrupulous or incompetent organizations. That’s why charter schools were originally supposed to be something akin to a small, controlled experiment: public school laboratories intended to encourage new ways to educate students. That way, if something turned out not to work, the risk to students, educators and communities could be contained.
Unfortunately, the modest educators and community members of the charter school movement’s early days have been eclipsed by members of the charter school industry: an industry rife with fraud, waste and abuse. Yet advocates, particularly among elected officials, have been unwilling to confront this fact and deal accordingly.
Fraud and abuse is rampant in the charter sector. Last week, our organizations issued a new report detailing how charter operators wasted or stole more than $100 million in taxpayer dollars. That number only reflects cases that have been reported in 15 states; it boggles the mind to consider what an examination of all states would uncover.
We found examples of operators embezzling millions in public funds for years before being detected, spending public funds on vacation homes instead of textbooks. In one case, someone bought a private airplane; in another egregious example, they used the money for visits to a strip club. In other cases, unfit operators just plain lost vast amounts of taxpayer money.
Sadly, H.R. 10, the charter schools bill recently approved by the House, fails to address the corruption within this poorly regulated industry.
Ignoring several representatives who offered common-sense amendments, the House passed a bill that fails to call for even basic protections like conflict-of-interest guidelines. It “requires” annual audits, yet allows states to waive the requirement, making it easier for fraudulent actors to hide their theft. It does not extend open meetings laws to charters, nor does it require charter operators to include community representation on their boards.
The bill further erodes community input and oversight by awarding priority status to states that allow entities that are not local education agencies (LEA) to be charter authorizers. Not only will this make it harder for local communities to control access to our tax dollars, it will also erode the quality and consistency of children’s education. For example, 17 charters abruptly closed in Columbus, Ohio, last year alone. In most cases, their non-LEA authorizers’ slipshod vetting processes missed red flags that would have allowed them to thwart fraud and mismanagement.
Disturbingly, the bill awards priority to states that don’t have charter caps, encouraging states to further accelerate charter growth before they’ve established the protections that could prevent the aforementioned abuses. States already struggle to monitor the charter schools they have; it is simply reckless to incentivize them to open more before establishing necessary protections.
H.R. 10 ignores many of the most pressing community concerns about charters. Any new funding for charter schools must encourage more, not less, oversight and involvement by local taxpayers and families. Specifically, a new bill should ban the practice of requiring parent contracts, one of many practices that charter operators use to avoid serving the neediest students.
Charter operators should also be required to collect and publicly report information on student attrition, mobility, and transfer before coming back to the public till. This crucial information will ensure that public funding stays with the students it’s intended to benefit. It will also allow families and policymakers to make informed comparisons between charter and public schools.
If our senators want to ensure success and opportunity through quality public schools, they should create legislative protections that promote quality, and mandate the transparency and accountability that make a school public. H.R. 10 does none of this. Children and taxpayers deserve better.
Kyle Serrette is the director of Education Justice Campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy. Sabrina Joy Stevens is the executive director of Integrity in Education.
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In Minneapolis, a Strong ‘Fair Scheduling’ Law for Workers Runs Into a Corporate Roadblock
Less than a year after San Francisco passed a first-of-its-kind fair scheduling ordinance for retail employers, progressive activists in Minneapolis began pushing for an even stronger scheduling...
Less than a year after San Francisco passed a first-of-its-kind fair scheduling ordinance for retail employers, progressive activists in Minneapolis began pushing for an even stronger scheduling ordinance of their own—along with paid sick leave, wage theft protections, and the possibility of a $15 minimum wage.
But the campaign, dubbed the Working Families Agenda, ran into a roadblock earlier this month when its most powerful political ally, Mayor Betsy Hodges, decided to abandon the fair scheduling component. Language in the proposed ordinance called for scheduling notice of at least two weeks in advance and extra “predictability pay” for workers who were scheduled after that threshold.
Those requirements quickly awoke the local business lobby, typically a fairly dormant political power in a city with a strong progressive streak. In late September, opponents formed the Workforce Fairness Coalition by the Chamber of Commerce, and included prominent members like the Minnesota Business Partnership (which represents about 80 businesses, including Target, U.S. Bancorp and Xcel Energy) and the Minnesota Restaurant Association. They took specific issue with the scheduling law, saying that it would impede operations and could force businesses to flee the city.
Many progressive activists don’t buy that argument.
“We heard the same arguments from the Chamber of Commerce that are being made in Minneapolis,” says Gordon Mar, who led the campaign to pass San Francisco’s Retail Worker Bill of Rights, which includes fair scheduling. “As we’ve been implementing the law, those arguments have proven to be just as hollow as they were in business’s opposition to other worker-friendly laws."
Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges ran in 2013 on a campaign that promised to directly address the city’s stark racial disparities, aspiring for a “One Minneapolis.” The city has some of the largest gaps in the country between whites and people of color for a number of indicators including rates of high school graduation, homeownership, low-level arrests and employment.
Those disparities are rampant in the workplace, too. For example, 63 percent of white workers in Minneapolis have access to earned sick time compared with just 32 percent of Latino workers. A Minnesota Department of Health report found that 79 percent of food workers—many of whom are minorities—lacked paid sick time.
In her 2015 State of the City address just six months ago, Hodges outlined an agenda she said would address economic disparities, specifically calling for an ambitious plan to implement fair scheduling, wage theft protection and paid sick leave. But since then, Hodges appears to have taken business’s concerns to heart.
“When it comes to fair, predictable scheduling, I have heard from many people, including many business owners, that the issue is complicated and that more time is needed to engage in this important issue,” the mayor said in a statement on October 14. “As a result, I have come to the conclusion that we are not in a position to resolve the concerns satisfactorily on the timeline currently contemplated.”
While Hodges pledged to continue pushing for paid sick leave and wage theft enforcement, activists felt blindsided by her sudden retreat.
“Our progressive champions were not prepared for the pushback and frankly folded under the pressure, … caving to conservative business elements,” says Anthony Newby, executive director for Minnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, a member of the coalition supporting these policies. “Where does [Hodges] want to be allied? With working people or with the worst actors of the business community?”
The day after Hodges’ announcement, about 300 people streamed into City Hall in downtown Minneapolis to reaffirm support for all aspects of the Working Families Agenda. Workers and organizers spoke about the daily burdens of low-wage work and how they contribute to the racial disparities that plague a city often portrayed as a progressive wonderland. Minneapolis NAACP President Nekima Levy-Pounds described the city’s situation as a tale of two cities: “It’s the best of times if you’re white and the worst of times if you’re black.”
While the scheduling law language had not been set in stone, many businesses were concerned with its details. At first, advanced notice for schedules was set at four weeks, which was eventually scaled back to two. For every change an employer made to a worker’s schedule within two weeks of the shift, that worker would earn an hour’s wage worth of “predictability pay.” For any schedule change within 24 hours of a shift, a worker would get four hours’ pay.
Opponents were quick to cast this as an unrealistic policy with a costly burden placed on employers, and would be completely unworkable for restaurants, retailers and many other businesses that they say are dependent on “flexible” scheduling models. Advocates are quick to point out, though, that current workplace scheduling standards put all the cost on workers. For example, if a worker relies on childcare during her shifts and an employer tells her to stay late, many childcare centers charge fees for late pickups; or, having already spent money on childcare and transit, she could arrive at work to find her shift has been cut.
On fair scheduling, says Elianne Farhat with the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fair Workweek Initiative, it’s clear there’s going to be a cost. “What gets lost in the conversation is that it’s not that there isn’t a cost right now— it’s just that the workers are bearing that cost,” Farhat says. “What [fair scheduling] is trying to do is balance that cost.”
Despite Hodges’ call for more time to parse out details on scheduling, activists aren’t backing off. Her announcement seems to have galvanized many local organizations that previously were on the fence. Organizers say they will continue to advocate for paid sick leave and wage theft protections in the immediate future while aiming for an eventual victory on fair scheduling.
Compromises will likely need to be made. While San Francisco’s scheduling law applied only to big chain stores, Minneapolis’s fair scheduling proposal is universal. That may need to be scaled back, according to activists: Some added flexibility for “predictability pay” requirements may be needed, and further discussion about phase-in periods for smaller businesses will likely be coming. But organizers say they didn’t expect an easy path to passing the strongest scheduling law in the country. In fact, at a city council meeting last week two members announced a plan to refer the proposed paid sick leave policy to a new committee made up of workers, labor leaders, employers and business associations that would meet in mid-November and hash out details.
“‘No’ is not an answer. The question is what does it take to get a yes,” says Newby. “We need to figure out what is that sweet spot that’s gonna work for us. That may take a little bit more time.”
Source: In These Times
‘Clopening’ time: Seattle on the clock for secure scheduling
‘Clopening’ time: Seattle on the clock for secure scheduling
The subject has been bubbling up in Seattle public discourse for around six months now. Last fall, local progressive labor advocacy organization Working Washington and Starbucks baristas protested...
The subject has been bubbling up in Seattle public discourse for around six months now. Last fall, local progressive labor advocacy organization Working Washington and Starbucks baristas protested their inconsistent and unpredictable work schedules, which labor advocates say act as barriers for low-income workers to scheduling life necessities like college classes or childcare or budgeting living expenses. A few months later, in his 2016 state of the city speech, Mayor Ed Murray highlighted secure scheduling as a key low-wage worker equity issue and said his office would work with the City Council to address it.
“We know that having a secure schedule of hours helps workers plan their budget, plan for childcare, enroll in school or take a second job – and we know schedule predictability will most help low-wage hourly workers,” Murray said in his speech.
SECURE SCHEDULING
Here are a couple chances to get involved or learn more: Thursday night, “join a live tele-town hall over the phone and over the internet about the fight for secure scheduling in Seattle. When: 6:00 pm, Thursday, May 26, 2016. Where: You can listen in live over the phone by calling 855-756-7520 Ext. 32020#, or join live online athttp://workingwa.org/ourtimecounts/townhall.” On Friday, the committee will hear from Lonnie Goldan, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute who has studied the issue, on her findings and national data. Tune in to Seattle Channel at 9:30AM to watch. On June 16th,Working Washington is holding a “Secure Scheduling Story Slam.”
With a $15 minimum wage already under Seattle’s belt, City Hall along with labor and business interests have turned their attention to the next big issue affecting the city’s proletariat and their bosses: secure scheduling.
“The response has moved pretty quickly from when workers first spoke out about it, and that’s heartening. There’s been a tremendous amount of support expressed by both the council and the mayor’s office on the need to move forward and do something to address secure scheduling,” said Sage Wilson, a spokesperson for Working Washington. “This is a really urgent issue for workers week to week.”
“Clopenings” — when a worker works a late-night closing shift and is also directed to work a early-morning opening shift with only a few hours in between
On March 8th, the mayor’s office convened a group of stakeholders of both labor and employers representing—including representatives from the likes of Working Washington, the Washington Restaurant Association, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, and unions like SEIU 775 and UFCW Local 21—who have been meeting separately and then “reporting out” regularly to the the city council’s committee on Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development & Arts (of which Herbold is the chair and District 3’s own Kshama Sawant is a committee member) on their discussions to help inform the Council. The mayor’s office says these stakeholders will be submitting formal recommendations to the council at some unidentified date.
The council committee has also been bringing in experts on the issue and model secure scheduling ordinances. Last week, the committee heard from representatives from the Center for Center for Popular Democracy (CPD)—a non-profit left advocacy group—on their model secure scheduling policy and the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement, who enacted their own scheduling ordinance specifically for retail workers several years ago.
The Council and the mayor’s office also commissioned a study from researchers at the University of Washington Evan’s School of Public Policy and Governance on the state of irregular scheduling in Seattle, including focus groups and a employer/manager survey of scheduling practices. The study is slated to come back on July 4th.
The plan, according to staffers in Herbold’s office, is to keep meeting with the stakeholders, receiving input from experts and looking at available data into early June, after which Herbold’s office will start drafting the actual policy.
The claims of Working Washington and picketing Starbucks baristas have merit. Researchers in addition to advocates have documented the impacts of unpredictable scheduling on workers (especially employees receiving hourly compensation), namely the association between irregular schedules and work/family conflicts (like picking up kids from school or childcare), the inability to schedule and maintain routines (e.g college classes or other jobs), and general increased worker stress from having to be on-call all the time. These types of jobs are concentrated in the retail, food service, hospitality, and healthcare industries.
Last year’s report from the Restaurant Opportunity Center on the state of the restaurant industry in Seattle showed that 26% of local restaurant workers receive their schedules less than a week in advance and 30% see schedule changes every two weeks. And women and people of color (who are heavily represented in low-wage food industry jobs) are disproportionately impacted by erratic scheduling.
“The issues that we’ve heard most about from workers are about two weeks advance notice of schedules”
The utilization of new scheduling software by employers and managers has been identified as a major cause of irregular scheduling. Starbucks has come under fire in recent years for its scheduling policies, specifically its utilization of scheduling software designed to maximize company efficiency by predicting store traffic and corresponding required staffing levels when and where. Advocates say the software incentivizes managers to under-staff stores, keeps employee hours at part time levels (which also allows employers to avoid giving full-time employee benefits and overtime), and quickly patch together weekly schedules from a large pool of part-time employees, often with little advance notice for the employee.
One of the often cited extreme results of digitized, maximum-efficiency scheduling is “clopenings,” when a worker works a late-night closing shift and is also directed to work a early-morning opening shift with only a few hours in between.
Advocates want to see these issues addressed in any future policy in Seattle.
“The issues that we’ve heard most about from workers are about two weeks advance notice of schedules,” said Wilson of Working Washington. “There’s access to hours. before companies hire more and more extremely part time workers, they should give more hours to employees they already have. And then there’s the eliminating ‘clopening shifts’ and the right to rest. You should have the ability to rest at least eleven hours between shifts.”
What the final ordinance will look like is still unclear, though based on the arch of the committee and stakeholder discussions, we know what they’re considering. It’s a balancing act between the real need to crack down on scheduling policies that leave employees at the mercy of their employer and employer’s legitimate need for scheduling flexibility, such as when a restaurant gets slammed during a understaffed dinner rush or someone calls in sick.
There is a potential ways to find that middle ground, as was illustrated at last Tuesday’s committee meeting and presentations on CPD’s model ordinance and San Francisco’s own retail worker secure scheduling ordinance. Both the CPD and San Francisco model use a “predictability pay” mandate as an incentive for employers to give workers adequate notice, where employers would compensate a worker for an hour’s worth of wages if they fail to provide a schedule two weeks or more in advance, and then dialing it up for schedule changes or notices that occur within 24 hours by raising the mandated compensation to two to four hours of pay. The San Francisco ordinance does provide exceptions for employee initiated shift swaps, like when an employer needs another worker to cover the shift of an employee who is out sic). Both models also require that employers must make hours available to veteran employees before hiring more part-time employees, a requirement aimed at combating the proliferation of part-time employee labor.
“The policy is designed to both preserve the flexibility that workers and employers need in making work schedules while also promoting stability for hourly workers,” Rachel Deutsch of the CPD told the Council.
District 3’s Kshama Sawant told CHS that she wants to see a policy that affects all businesses in Seattle, not just big retail and foodservice businesses. San Francisco’s ordinance is structured to only affect big box retailers.
“While it’s true that the issue is experienced more by workers in the service industry and retail industry, like Starbucks, the best way to ensure secure scheduling for all workers is to ensure a citywide policy for all businesses across Seattle,” Sawant said.
Naturally, the issue pits the local labor and employer camps duking it out during Seattle’s $15 minimum wage debate against each other yet again. However the tone and dynamic of the debate in this round, is a little different, along with the format. While the Seattle Chamber of Commerce has indicated that it is certainly uncomfortable with the secure scheduling initiative and initial stakeholder discussions with council committee back in March resulted in the employer representatives claiming that scheduling wasn’t really a problem, loud pushback from the business community has been noticeably lacking in recent weeks.
“It was the early committee meetings that employers were spending time and energy to try and deny that scheduling was a problem,” said Wilson. “One the things that has happened through the stakeholder process is that employers have stopped trying to make that case. They’re largely in agreement [with labor] that people should have predictable schedules.”
Sierra Hansen, head of the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce, said that the issue is barely on the radar of the chamber’s board and that she hasn’t heard anything about it from member businesses.
“I would prefer we draft an ordinance and then debate it rather than closed room discussions and that the public got involved”
Wilson with Working Washington attributes the change in the dynamic of the stakeholder group conversations to the political climate of the city, the unity between the executive and the council to push the issue, and previous local labor victories, like $15 and paid sick and safe leave.
“It does seem to me to be both a product of the process as well as a strong consensus on Council and the mayor to do something on this,” said Wilson. “[And] the mood of the city is pretty clear: people want workers to have basic rights.”
Sawant, who was voted into office on her fiery platform of rent control, a $15 dollar an hour minimum wage, and a fundamental change in labor and equity in the city, said that the stakeholder workgroup process is “not an approach that I would choose.”
“I would prefer we draft an ordinance and then debate it rather than closed room discussions and that the public got involved,” said Sawant. “That’s how we won $15 dollar an hour, that’s how we won the SHA rent hikes. A lot of historic things have happened, and that’s because of the approach of my office.”
“What was different around $15 was that we were very clear. If you were for $15 you were with working people and had to go up against big business and be courageous about that,” Sawant said. “I know that there is this narrative from the mayor and big business and Tom Douglas that we won 15 because we all came together and agreed to raise the minimum wage. That’s absolutely untrue. The reason we won 15 is because we had a mass movement in Seattle.”
by Josh Kelety
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23 hours ago
23 hours ago