Big Government & Its Union Enablers Are Keeping Secrets to Stay in Power

It’s happening all across the country: Politicians and their union enablers skirt the law—and keep the public in the dark—to provide taxpayer-funded handouts and other favored treatment to public-sector labor unions.

The winners? Big government and its chosen special interests.

The losers? The taxpaying American public.

When the city of Phoenix began its most recent round of union contract negotiations, it allowed government unions to ignore a law requiring the unions to submit their proposals for public comment. The Goldwater Institute, where I work, stepped in and requested public records regarding the proposals so the public could learn how these important public policy issues were being discussed behind closed doors. But the city denied our request, claiming that its interest in secret negotiations outweighed the public’s right to know. As we explained in suing the city over its lack of transparency, the government illegally shut the public out of labor negotiations, even though taxpayers fund both the union contracts and the negotiations themselves.

Read the rest of the op-ed at Townhall.

Parker Jackson is a Staff Attorney at the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation, and the lead attorney in Goldwater’s lawsuit against the city of Phoenix to uncover public records regarding its union negotiations.