Which adversary shall we pull for?

You may have seen the news of the dust-up: The Oregon School Boards Association (OSBA) is trying to hold onto about $50 million that has accumulated in a reserve fund dedicated to defraying health care premium increases for Oregon school districts.

The money comes from the OSBA’s health care trust program, which will now disappear because of a bill pushed by the teachers union last session. The whole situation is worth explaining, because it is a case study in power politics between opposing interest groups.

The OSBA is one of the organizations in what I would describe as the “ education leviathan.” They ostensibly represent the political interests of school districts in Oregon, which they do through lobbying and through legal assistance on regulatory and contracting issues. As such, they are on the other side of the table from the teachers unions during collective bargaining contract negotiations.

On the other hand, the OSBA is often on the same side as the OEA on a host of other issues: they for years jointly fought our efforts to kill CIM/CAM; they lobby with the OEA on tax increases, school funding increases, and anything else that protects and defends the public school monopoly.

The health care trust program provides about half of the OSBA’s five or six million dollar operating budget. Basically they act as broker to about 100 school districts for health insurance, and take a skim off the top. Pretty easy money, and by most accounts, they actually save districts some dough as well. (This is disputed, but I really don’t know which side is correct.)

The OEA saw an opportunity to stick a dagger in the OSBA’s chest this session, given their newfound influence among the new Democrat majority. All they had to do was mandate that all districts had to purchase their health insurance from a similar trust run by the state, and presto! Half of their enemy’s operating budget would disappear!

True, the OSBA and the OEA are allies on lots of issues. But no issue is more important to the OEA than their collective bargaining contracts, and this is where they are always fighting OSBA-led negotiating teams. So if they could peel off half their budget, the OEA figures, it would weaken the OSBA’s ability to prevail in contract negotiations.

The Democrats in the legislature were only too willing to carry the water. The bill sailed through the legislature. It was one of several public employee union power plays we saw this session as Kulongoski and the D’s paid off their chits.

The OSBA had been accumulating the $50 million reserve fund for years and years, and now that substantial amount of money looks like a pretty good buffer for them to keep their budget whole while they figure out some other way to plug the $3 million crater the OEA blew in it. So they announced that rather than use this dough to defray premiums for their members for the next couple years (until the state trust is fully enrolled) that they would use the money themselves, to “provide services” to those same members.

The OEA is screaming about it, and will surely sue. My guess is they win – that money is for health premiums, not services.

My take: I like it when two of my adversaries fight. On charter schools, the OSBA has been a huge pain in the butt, because we constantly find ourselves on opposite sides of the table from them, and they constantly pull all sorts of shenanigans that I have chronicled in this blog and elsewhere.

The OEA is not anywhere nearly as much a pain in the butt. They hate charters, for sure, but outside of trying to kill us in the legislature, their tools are pretty limited.

So in this one, I’m pulling for the OEA!