The Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB) is having problems. A majority of the teachers union’s board members allege that the union’s President and its Executive Director have engaged in a variety of misdeeds, such as:
- Refusing to hand over financial documents for board scrutiny — TALB Executive Director Scott McVarish allegedly agreed to let a board-hired copier technician photocopy the union’s financial records, but kicked him out of the union office before he could finish
- The president’s refusing “to acknowledge nine directors on the board … to consider their properly made motions, their votes and even their presence”
- Presenting a TALB-hired attorney’s legal opinion on changing the union constitution (to give the president more power) as if it were an opinion from the California Teachers Association, TALB’s parent union
- Using tens of thousands of dues dollars to pay for vote recounts for TALB employees who were running for political office in Long Beach (the expenditures were counted as “bargaining” expenses by the union so that teachers who had chosen not to support the union’s politicking were forced to pay for it anyway)
- Filing inaccurate financial reports to cover deficit spending that may leave the union as much as $100,000 in the hole
No indictments yet, but we won’t be surprised when/if it happens.