As I’ve written on these pages (here and here), I strongly oppose the massive tax increase known as Proposition 103. It’s marketed as “for the children” as most Democrat proposals are, but it’s really “for the teachers’ unions.”

A piece by RiShawn Biddle at the American Spectator points out just how much money the teachers’ unions are collecting:

The AFT alone collected $211 million a year in dues during its 2010-2011 fiscal year (most of it by force from the very teachers whose interests they proclaim to represent), while the far-larger NEA pulled in $397 million during its 2009-2010 fiscal year period. Each union, on their own, collects more dues than the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, Service Employees International Union, or the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. When one adds in the revenues collected by their affiliates, the two unions are billion-dollar organizations with budgets that match their corporate peers.

The leaders of both unions are as well paid as most midsized corporate chief executives and leaders in the nonprofit arena. AFT President Weingarten, for example, collected $493,895 in 2010-2011, a 15 percent increase over the same period last year; Weingarten’s NEA counterpart, Dennis Van Roekel, collected $397,221 in the previous year. Their staffs are also well-compensated. Four hundred thirty-three of the NEA’s staffers earned at least $100,000 in annual compensation; the 193 AFT staffers collecting six-figure checks include David Dorn, the union’s director of international  affairs (who was paid $223,965 last year), and Hartina Flournoy, a longtime Democratic Party operative who earns $231,337 a year as Weingarten’s assistant.

Colorado’s education ills are not going to be solved by throwing more money at a system dominated by bureaucrats and union hacks whose primary motivation is swelling the union coffers. More than two decades of increasing student-adjusted, inflation-adjusted spending without any increase in results is all the proof you need that increasing education spending without dramatically reforming the education system is a fool’s errand.

I strongly urge everyone to vote NO on Proposition 103 and to encourage their friends to do the same.

Remember, ballots are due November 1st.

This will be a low turn-out election with no actual candidates running for state-wide office. The unions who have millions of dollars of your money to gain if this passes are spending a lot of money lying to people to get them to vote for the measure.  If you don’t want your state income tax bill to rise 8% (going from 4.63% to 5%), I ask you to vote No and to try to get at least two other people to do the same…and to make the same challenge to them.