Charter, tax credit groups again outspend teachers' unions on lobbying
While teachers' unions remain near the top of the list of the state’s highest-spending interest groups, a position they’ve occupied for decades, they no longer dominate education lobbying in New York.
The unions have been joined by several groups supportive of issues they’ve opposed, such as expansion of charter schools and a tax credit that would redirect money to private schools, according to a POLITICO New York analysis of lobbying reports submitted to the Joint Commission on Public Ethics and campaign finance disclosure reports submitted by state-level candidates and parties to the Board of Elections.
In all, labor groups and their key allies on education issues spent $8.3 million on political activity in 2015. Charter schools and their influential lobbying arms spent a little over $9 million, and tax credit advocates, $5.7 million, according to the lobbying and campaign finance reports.
For the second consecutive year, reform groups, including charter and tax credit advocates, outspent unions on lobbying, contradicting the argument often made by reform groups that unions dominate state education policy by pouring money into their lobbying efforts.
The $23 million spent last year is down from$30 million in 2014, which is at least partially attributable to the fact that statewide elections were held in 2014.
The decrease is likely also driven by the changed political calculus for both unions and charter groups after most of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s sweeping education reform proposals failed during last year’s legislative session.
In the last six months of 2015, two key education factions pulled back their advocacy efforts as imminent threats to unions subsided and charter groups dialed back their lobbying efforts in accordance with Cuomo’s shifting priorities.
Early last year, New York State United Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers were facing existential threats from state government and advocates.
Cuomo proposed a series of reform proposals that would have been anathema for the unions, and a lawsuit seeking to overturn the state’s teacher tenure protections was working its way through the courts.
But a year later, Cuomo has largely reversed his education agenda in favor of union Charter, tax credit groups again outspend teachers' unions on lobbying | POLITICO:
