Collective bargaining in government is controversial, but it should never be a secret.
Collective bargaining talks are the negotiations government unions have with government officials over salaries, benefits and working conditions. Because they involve millions of dollars of taxpayer money, they should be open and transparent. This doesn’t mean the public participates in the negotiations, but the public should be allowed to observe the process.
This kind of process is not only good for taxpayers, but also for union members who are able to see how their union leadership is representing them at the bargaining table.
Idaho law prevents cities and unions from negotiation any contracts in secret. Democrats and Republicans passed the law unanimously and it was signed into law by former Governor Butch Otter in 2015.
Washington state, however, is a different story. While numerous attempts have been made to bring sunshine to the secretive process, government unions have resisted every step of the way.
The latest saga comes from Spokane, where unions sued the citizens who overwhelmingly approved a 2019 charter change that would have required sunlight on the process. The city didn’t seem interested in the oversight, and because of its weak defense, the courts tossed the voter-approved change.
But various forms of open, transparent negotiations continue in more than half the states – including Idaho - and taxpayers and union members are all the better for it.
In Montana, Article II, Section 9 of the Montana State Constitution contains a sweeping government transparency requirement:
“No person shall be deprived of the right to examine documents or to observe the deliberations of all public bodies or agencies of state government and its subdivisions, except in cases in which the demand of individual privacy clearly exceeds the merits of public disclosure.”
Ideally, contract negotiations should be fully open to the public. But at a minimum, government officials should adopt an openness process like the one used by the City of Costa Mesa, California, to keep the public informed. The city’s policy is called Civic Openness in Negotiations, or COIN.
Under COIN, all contract proposals and documents to be discussed in closed- door negotiations are made publicly available before and after the meetings, with fiscal analysis showing the potential costs. While not full-fledged open meetings, access to all of the documents better informs the public about promises and tradeoffs being proposed with their tax dollars before an agreement is reached.
This openness also makes clear whether one side or the other is being unreasonable in its demands, and quickly reveals whether anyone is acting in bad faith. It’s a hybrid solution that could be adopted by local officials if full open meetings are not allowed.