Many people plan to vote for Proposition 75 because they think that teachers and other public employees have no option to withdraw their dues from the political activities conducted by their professional associations.

Currently any teacher joining the California Teachers Association (CTA) can check a box on their membership form which will ensure that no portion of their dues will ever be spent on political action.

If they missed that check box when joining, they need only contact their local association to restrict their dues from that point forward. Teachers are aware of this and about 10 percent of California’s teachers have optedout.

Make no mistake––the Proposition 75 requirement that we get annual written permission from teachers, firefighters, nurses, police and other public employees across the state in order to spend a portion of their dues on politics is a ploy to curtail our political voice. We have never asked those members who have opted out of the political arena to confirm this annually or certainly they would have felt harassed by such a requirement.

This proposed bureaucratic nightmare is an attempt to bury us in paperwork, diverting our energies. Employee associations are already outspent by corporate interests in the political arena by a margin of more than 20 to 1.

Most teachers, firefighters, nurses, police and other public employees understand that their association makes political recommendations based on the estimated impact on their profession.

They know that they don’t have to always agree with the political position of their association for there to be value in the political service provided. They can take comfort in knowing that even if they are too busy to follow both state and national politics, their association will alert them if a potentially difficult political situation arises.

It isn’t just the social studies teachers who see the value of hearing from those with differing views before forming their own opinions. In a healthy democratic society, a lively political debate should be encouraged, not buried under a landslide of paperwork. Teresa Coffman Algebra teacher Thousand Oaks