Although the Obama campaign talked a good game about how important transparency is,
the administration is not so interested in the value of transparency when it comes to their union bosses.
rolling back rules requiring labor unions and their leaders to report information about their finances and compensation.
The Labor Department noted in a recent disclosure that "it would not be a good use of resources" to bring enforcement actions against union officials who do not comply with conflict of interest reporting rules passed in 2007. Instead, union officials will now be allowed to file older, less detailed conflict reports.
The regulation, known as the LM-30 rule, was at the heart of a lawsuit that the AFL-CIO filed against the department last year. One of the union attorneys in the case, Deborah Greenfield, is now a high-ranking deputy at Labor, who also worked on the Obama transition team on labor issues.
Labor officials declined to say whether she played a role in the new policy, noting that Ms. Greenfield is abiding by all government ethics rules. In court filings, she and other union attorneys called the 2007 rules "onerous."
The Labor Department also is rescinding another key labor financial disclosure regulation. The expansion of the so-called LM-2 rule, approved during the last days of the Bush administration, requires unions to report more information about finances and labor leaders' compensation on annual reports.
Sounds like a reverse revolving door - have those who are being regulated now in the government in the position to roll back those regulations. How convenient. Other union leaders now hold top jobs in the Department of Labor.
• Patrick Gaspard, White House political affairs director, who worked at the Service Employees International Union.
• T. Michael Kerr, who served as assistant to the secretary-treasurer at SEIU in charge of finance and administration before he was picked to serve as assistant secretary for administration and management at Labor.
Unions complain that compliance with disclosure regulations are too onerous. Funny how no one considers the burden of regulations when they're putting them on businesses. But for rank and file union members to find out how their dues are being spent, the administration is not so concerned.
2 comments:
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW.org) has complained about this for decades. Even during GOP administrations, getting the DOL to do its job has been, at best, like dragging an anchor across the seabed.
It took the NRTWLDF over ten years of legal wrangling to get the NEA and its state affiliate to open their books and prove how much of my "dues" were actually being spent on political matters, and when ordered to repay those sums, none of them were retroactive. Thus, it is in the unions' and DOL's interests to keep dragging that anchor as long as they can.
This revolving door won't be closed any tighter than the others Obama promised to close until he found the people he wanted to fill certain positions were "indispensable," even if they were tax cheats.
This is "big money in politics" - Dem style. Funny how all this talk of "greed" simply disappears when discussing the political operations of Dem party supporters. Total hypocrisy.
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