The chart below shows all Special Interest Big Labor groups and Casinos that have made sizable contributions to the Karen Mitchoff campaign for the 4th District Contra Costa County Supervisor seat. As of May 22, 2010, the date of the last Campaign Statement filing, Special Interest Labor Groups and Casinos had contributed just under $40,000 of Mitchoff’s $75,000 of total contributions.
Over 52% of Karen Mitchoff’s contributions were received from Labor Union groups that stand to recover a benefit from the election of their candidate to the Board of Supervisors for Contra Costa County. Of the total, $39,700 received from Unions and Casinos, over $22,000 came in the form of gifts from Construction Trades unions.
No doubt, these hefty contributions are in tacit exchange for her continued support of the Union monopoly Project Labor Agreement that the County continues to use to ensure that only Union workers are allowed to work on County funded construction projects.
In addition to the Construction Unions, most of the remaining campaign cash came from the County Employee unions like the Public Employees Unions Local #1, the Contra Costa Deputy Sheriffs Association, and the United Professional Firefighters-IAFF Local 1230. These unions of course stand to gain pockets full of money with a candidate that will continue to support their hefty pension schemes, early retirement programs, bountiful benefit plans and enormous salaries, in a time when the non-government sectors are cutting all of the above for the less fortunate who work in the private sector.
Karen Mitchoff has based her campaign on the slogan, “No More Business as Usual”. Really? Can she really say that with a straight face to the public and then take that much money from Special Interests?
Mike McGill, Mitchoff’s opponent in the race for, has not taken any contributions from unions. Mike stands for reforming County government and releasing the unions from their stronghold on our government that is bankrupting Contra Costa County. He is a Policy Nerd, a numbers guy, or whatever else you want to call a very intelligent man who can break the “Business as Usual” in our county.
Bill Gram-Reefer is Editor & Publisher of Halfway To Concord, founded in 2004. Halfway To Concord is the leading online source for community-driven political news, events, and opinion for Contra Costa County and the San Francisco East Bay.
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Hey Sacto Steve: "Worker friendly candidates" is a misnomer. Public employee unions have bought and paid for elected officials at every level of California government — including our own CoCoCo BoS. Mitchoff will do nothing but perpetuate the gross overspending that has produced financial chaos for Contra Costa workers and taxpayers alike. What's so "worker' friendly" about layoffs resulting from reckless spending sprees?
County wokers and their unions aren't to blame for the County's fiscal mess — it's fully attributable to careless elected officials. The County Administrator has clearly detailed the current, sad state of affairs:
http://www.halfwaytoconcord.com/mike-mcgill-an-ea….
They can get rid of defined benefit pensions if the state can legitimately claim that paying the pensions would pose an imminent threat to the survivability of the state – and they will be, so we should all just plan for the BK of CA
It’s amazing the power the unions have over the SUpervisors to get what they want at the expense of tazpayers.
OMG, the UNION BOSSES!!!
Hey it's OK for PG&E to spend $40 million on Prop. 16. It's OK for Mercury Insurance to spend millions more on Prop. 17. And it's just fine for corporations and business lobbyists to drop millions more to help Republicans gridlock the legislature.
But God forbid that working people should try to support worker friendly candidates and its the end of the world.
Thanks to Union friendly candidates the County is so deep in a hole it may never get out and even more deals are in the works to further protect the unlawful luxurious pension spiking by members of the CCCERA, not to mention sweetheart deals for the Fire Department. You better hope there's some money left to steal from rich people cause baby, it's all going away. Get over it.
And please stop with equating "working people" with unionized thuggery. You don't speak for more than 12% of workers in U.S. but get 100% of the sweet deals.
But hey, your from Sactomatoe so your gubbermint job is secure…for now.
Steve, the problem is that the unions don't really represent workers any more, they represent their own machine and the workers are just a pawn in the game. In construction, the unions run a ponzi scheme so let me pull back the curtain for you:
The unions provide funding to the campaign to get their candidate elected. In exchange for their good deed of getting the candidate their spot, the unions then get a signed monopoly agreement with the Agency Board that requires that all construction workers are union members. The employers of union workers then get to bid on the work with a very limited number of bidders due to the restricted competition. Restraint of competition=higher prices to us taxpayers. The employer with the winning bid then pays severely inflated wages to the union worker (a carpenter makes $36.50/hr.) and those union workers then turn over a substantial part of their wages to the union bosses. The employers also pay severely inflated health/vacation/pension benefit premiums (for a carpenter the cost is $21.15 per hour) to the union pension and benefit trust funds, supposedly for the benefit of the employees.
Now we all know that the union pension funds are severely underfunded for their future liabilities. A huge amount of the premium money is skimmed off the top and used for other things like investing in resorts and casinos under the guise of "investments" for unfunded liabilities. Then, of course, a large portion of the money is used for political campaigns to get "union-favorable" candidates elected or re-elected.
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