Welcome to the Tuesday, Dec. 17, Brew. Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:

1. Get to know how Ballotpedia covers ballot measures
2. Four Oregon school employees sue union over resignation restrictions
3. Forty percent of Brew readers said they were traveling for the holidays

Get to know how Ballotpedia covers ballot measures

Veto referendum, citizen initiatives, petitions - what exactly do those words mean? At Ballotpedia, we have a page covering just about anything you want to know regarding ballot measures. If you need to do research—or just want to explore—here’s an overview of our ballot measure coverage:

Ballot measures by year: Each year, we keep a complete list of all ballot measures certified to appear on state ballots across the country. Want to know how many measures voters decided in 2015? We have a page for that.

Ballot measures by state: Curious about the number of ballot measures in a particular state? We have lists of ballot measures for each state by year, including links to pages about each individual measure we’ve covered. 

Ballot measures by topic: We break down ballot measures into nearly 100 topic categories. Once you find the topic you're interested in, you can search for ballot measures within that topic by year or by state.

Potential ballot measures: We track potential ballot measures—such as legislatively referred constitutional amendments and citizen initiative and referenda—in each state. Wondering whether a certain initiative is likely to make it to the ballot? You can follow its progress on our site. 

Signature deadlines and requirements: Each state sets its own signature requirements and deadlines for citizen-initiated measures. We track those items for each state. We also have a page showing those deadlines and requirements in each state for a given election year.

Ballot measure campaign finance: We track and summarize campaign finance data for statewide ballot measures that have been certified each year.  In 2018, Ballotpedia tracked the $1.185 billion in contributions to campaigns that supported or opposed 67 measures.

Laws governing process: Curious how the initiative process works in different states? We cover that, too. Additionally, we track changes in the laws and initiatives that affect how measures make the ballot in each state.

Local ballot measures: Interested in local ballot measures? Ballotpedia covers all local measures in California and those that appear on the ballot in the nation’s 100 largest cities.

Learn more

       

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Four Oregon school employees sue union over resignation restrictions 

Ballotpedia has more than a dozen different newsletters. As a subscriber to all of them, I’m always learning something new from each new issue. I was reading Friday’s Union Station newsletter and thought I’d share this story with our Brew audience.  

Four Oregon public school employees filed suit Dec. 5 in a U.S. District Court arguing that their union has unconstitutionally denied their resignation requests and is continuing to collect dues against their wishes.

The union's membership agreement states that members may only revoke their dues deduction authorization during a 30-day period in June each year. It also states that members must pay dues for a minimum of one year before resigning. The plaintiffs allege the contract requirements violate their First Amendment rights and run afoul of the Supreme Court's 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision.  

In Janus, the Supreme Court ruled that unions cannot require non-member employees to pay agency fees covering the costs of non-political union activities. This overturned the precedent set in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, which held that non-members could be required to pay fees to a union if those fees were not used for political purposes.

The employees in the Oregon lawsuit all work for Hillsboro United School District in Hillsboro—which is the fifth largest city in the state and is located about 15 miles northwest of Portland. The plaintiffs are being represented by attorneys from the Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose self-described aim is "to reverse the stranglehold government unions have on our state and local policymaking." 

The defendants are the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Oregon state chapter of the AFT, AFT Local 4671, and the school district. According to a report filed with the U.S. Department of Labor, the Oregon state chapter of the AFT had 9,085 full dues-paying members as of Sept. 28, 2018. 

To stay up-to-date on this case and other stories like this, subscribe to Union Station—our weekly newsletter covering legislative and judicial activity about public-sector union policy. Click the link below to subscribe and receive the next edition in your email.

Forty percent of Brew readers said they’re traveling for the holidays

With the holidays fast approaching, our What’s the Tea? question last Friday asked our Brew readers whether they were traveling to visit loved ones this season. As I mentioned last week, I’m hosting the annual family gathering this year, so I was in the ‘no’ column.

Forty percent said that they were indeed traveling. 

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