Democratic lawmakers disingenuously target employer retro pools

DEMOCRATS in the Legislature are backing a bill to silence their political nemesis, the Building Industry Association of Washington, under the guise of doing something else.

The proposed law, Senate Bill 6035, is about retro pools, which are employer groups that handle work-injury claims — there are about 50 in the state that serve farmers to restaurant owners to contractors. Under state law, if a retro pool can beat the state's costs — which they usually can — the state will refund part of employers' taxes to the pool. Some of this refund is what BIAW has used to pay for campaign ads attacking Democrats, including Gov. Chris Gregoire.

Some of the ads were nasty, and we said so. But they are political speech nonetheless, and it is not the Legislature's business to sit in judgment on them. Legislators know that, and have fashioned a bill that shuts down political speech while visibly doing something else. Its sponsor, Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, describes it as a disclosure bill, which it is. It also limits the things the retro pool can do with the tax refunds — and excludes political contributions.

When the state tells a voluntary, private association what it can do with its own money, it trods on the right of free speech.

Kohl-Welles argues retro pools are authorized by law for particular purposes — to enhance worker safety and to save money for employers — and that refund money should be limited by law to those things.

But the same argument might be applied to labor unions, which are private associations authorized to negotiate on behalf of employees. But no law forbids political spending by the Washington Education Association or the Service Employees International Union, and Democrats, who benefit from that spending, are not proposing to limit it.

S.B. 6035 is an attempt at political payback, and should be defeated.