UPDATED:
A judge this afternoon rejected a request from a group opposing three propositions being floated by the Firefighters union to block the San Antonio City Council from placing the items on the November ballot at tomorrows meeting.
ORIGINAL STORY:
Lawyers for a political action committee seeking to throw out three ballot initiatives proposed by the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association argued today that the City Council should be blocked from placing the items on the November ballot at tomorrow's meeting because the union broke the law when it used union dues to pay for a group that collected the petition signatures to put the issue on the ballot, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
The judge said she would take the matter under advisement and rule by 9AM Thursday.
Attorney Mikal Watts, representing the PAC, says the union used dues money to pay the Buda based signature collection organization some $510,000 to gather signatures for the three issues.
He said that is in violation of state law, and the 'Janus Decision' in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that labor unions cannot use dues money for political purposes, saying that violates the First Amendment rights of members who may not agree with the spending.
Watts said the SAPFFA had the right to form a political action committee and solicit dues form supportive members instead.
"The union broke the law and they got caught," said Christian Archer, a coordinator of the political action committee.
The measures allow a public vote on essentially anything City Council does by lowering the bar for 'initiative and referendum,' as well as slashing the salary of the City Manager to no more than ten times the salary of the lowest paid full-time city employee, which would cut the maximum salary to about $250,000. The measure would not affect current City Manager Sheryl Sculley, who makes about twice that.
It would also allow voters to gather signatures to call a public vote on virtually everything City Council does."
These are three terrible propositions for the future of the city," Archer said.
But lawyers for the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association argued that spending the money on the firm that collected the signatures was not a violation of the Janus Decision, because, since it did not involve candidates, it was not a political expenditure. They said it amounted to spending union dues on union business, which is legal.
They also argued that since Texas is a right-to-work state, no firefighter is required to be a member of the union, so they could have dropped out of the union if they felt their First Amendment rights were being violated.
A decision must come by 9AM tomorrow, because that is the last opportunity for the City Council to vote to place the items on the November ballot.
State District Judge Kathleen Stryker has three options. She can dismiss the lawsuit and allow City Council to place the items on the November ballot. She can rule that the signatures were indeed gathered illegally and block of the city from acting, or she can place the issue on hold pending review by an appellate court, which means the City could place the issue on a ballot once a court has ruled, potentially the municipal election ballot in May.