Union Secrecy reigns supreme

Chris Day

Chris Day has been trying to verify union financial statistics. 

He's have no luck at all.

See the union, even though it exists only because of Tax payer dollars, is exempt from public records disclosure, since its basically a Trimet 'contractor'.

One hell of a racket they got going here.

This post is the 3rd post in this series.

Chris sent THIS letter to the union.

He got THIS response originally which was then followed by the response below.

Chris:

The following is the Union’s response to your five part request for documents:

1.       The contract between the Union and True Ballot is, by its terms, the exclusive property of True Ballot.  (WOW) 
The document contains proprietary information regarding True Ballot’s business practices, methodologies and fee schedules.  As such, True Ballot has an interest in protecting the integrity of its property and business interests. (nothing like having a place handling your voting that keeps its procedures totally secret, fraud would be undetectable) Following your request, I contacted True Ballot and requested permission to release the document you have requested.  True Ballot has refused to grant permission to release its contract.  Therefore, the information in response to this request is not available.(Unbelievable, truly)
2.       The information you are seeking is contained within the contract between the Union and True Ballot.  As explained above, the Union is unable to release this information.(why is this restated)
3.       The information you are seeking is contained within the contract between the Union and True Ballot.  As explained above, the Union is unable to release this information.(stated yet again? WTf?)
4.       The Union has neither asked for, nor received, a quote for the cost of adding a Run-Off election. (what?)
5.       The specific nature of your request for “Documents showing the scheduling requirements” is unclear to me.  True Ballot does not make scheduling requirements.  True Ballot has consulted with the Union regarding an advisable election timeline.  While there are no documents respondent to your request, the nature of these consultations has been discussed in great detail with you and the other Union members who attended the last round of Charter Meetings. (translation: stop bugging us!)

Sincerely,

Lane Toensmeier, General Counsel

ATU, Division 757

Chris Day comments: 


ATU757 and True Ballot has a contract with each other. True Ballot is based out of Washington DC and it is not clear if this is a deal that involves International. I do know that International is not supposed to get involved at local levels until an appeal is needed to be addressed or any investigation involving fraud. 

With that being said I feel that ATU757 entered the contract with True Ballot on its own. Officers have stated to our members that the cost of 2012 election cost over $28k. This cost does not include staff time and it does include printing, postage, ballot company processing costs and ballot counting. 2012 LM2 indicates that True Ballot was paid $11,997.00. I researched postal cost and found postage should be around $2,000.00. Then I researched printing cost and I was able to put that around $1,000.00. The total of the amounts I researched is $14,997.00 for the areas indicated by our officers saying the cost is over $28,000.00.

 Lane Toensmeier stated at the end of the email “the nature of these consultations has been discussed in great detail with you and the other Union members who attended the last round of Charter Meetings.” His statement is not true as well. I made a point from start to this point to conduct this out in the open so members can see firsthand what is going on.

 I have maintained all the documents so any member can get copies from me without worrying about filling out a form in detail about dates or anything like that. I will work at putting them all in pdf format for easy access. 

My conclusion is that our union officers has demonstrated that they will not give us accurate information and enter in to deals behind members back. This is where our union is failing and it must be corrected.