You have to give the Maryland teachers union credit for its chutzpah. It is like a teenager who tells her parents she needs their credit card to buy school supplies and then drives to Neiman Marcus.
The only problem: The credit card the union wants to abuse is the one paid for by every state taxpayer.
Last year the Maryland State Education Association supported legislation called the Fairness in Negotiations Act (SB 673), which would have added millions to local budgets in the form of higher teacher salaries and hundreds of millions to the pension obligations state taxpayers can already not afford to pay. Look no further than this year’s budget, where teacher retirement spending jumped 22.1 percent to $759.1 million, largely the result of a bump in benefits passed in 2006.
Sen. Jamin Raskin, D-Montgomery County, who sponsored the bill last year, has not reintroduced it, but it is top on the agenda of the MSEA and a hearing is planned for it. Basically, the legislation upends 40 years of precedent, having outside arbitrators instead of local boards of education make the final decision on teacher and employee contracts.
The Maryland Association of Boards of Education opposes the bill. Members urged legislators last year to deliberate “the magnitude of the shift of decision-making authority away from local boards, accountable to local policy priorities and fiscal realities, to outside arbitrators accountable to no one.”
Andres Alonso, chief executive officer of Baltimore City Public Schools who deserves credit for transforming city schools into places of learning under his short tenure, also opposes the legislation.
He says it “is not about outcomes for kids. The bill exclusively focuses on outcomes for adults, regardless of effects on student achievement. … Additionally, the bill’s usurping of local and state board review authority may further create increased barriers for input and collaboration by key educational stakeholders.”
In other words, children, community members and taxpayers would lose under the legislation. At a time when counties face huge deficits and are laying off employees, and the state is $2 billion in the hole, why would legislation that exacerbates both problems be considered?
The union describes the legislation as having “no fiscal impact on the state.” Technically that could prove true if legislators succeed in pushing teachers’ pension burden from state taxpayers to local ones.
But according to the fiscal impact statement from last year’s legislation, “general fund expenditures increase significantly to pay increased retirement costs.” And “local school system expenditures may increase significantly” from higher school employee salaries, fringe benefits, and the cost of outside mediators and arbitrators.
So there you have it. Contrary to its title, the legislation is not about “fairness.”
It is about the union’s desire to win higher salaries and benefits for teachers regardless of student performance or of community satisfaction with their work. The manipulative wording and veiled intent of the legislation should make residents wonder whether the union represents those with a higher calling or those who would rather ask only what taxpayers can do for them.
Examiner Columnist Marta Mossburg is a senior fellow with the Maryland Public Policy Institute and lives in Baltimore.
