Here's the
latest on Dave Regan’s
"groundbreaking" partnership with the California Hospital Association (CHA), which continues to explode in
"21st century" flames.
On November
20, Regan filed papers (for the third time) for a ballot initiative that he
hopes will leverage him back into bed with CHA’s CEO Duane Dauner. It's called the "Hospital Executive Compensation
Act of 2016."
CHA
officials, however, aren't exactly worried about Regan's latest ballot-initiative
threat, say Tasty's sources.
Why?
They don't
believe Regan has enough money to carry out the threat.
Regan
will have to spend approximately $5 million to simply collect enough signatures
to qualify the initiative for the ballot. After that, he’ll have to spend
millions more to actually win a victory at the ballot box.
Meanwhile, Regan
is trying to qualify two other statewide initiatives for the same election, and
is using $4 million from the sale of one of SEIU-UHW's offices to partially
finance that effort.
On top of
that, SEIU-UHW recently lost half of its members and announced a
$34 million reduction in the union's annual budget.
And then there's the problem that Regan's ballot-initiative scheme violates California law.
So… given
that hospital officials aren’t exactly quaking in their boots, Regan decided to
give them an extra dose of "smoke and mirrors" by announcing he's depositing
millions of dollars of SEIU-UHW members' dues money into a political fund to push his ballot initiative.
On December
16, SEIU-UHW issued a press
release announcing "it has made an initial $3 million contribution to
a political fund that will be used in the coming election year to support or
oppose ballot initiatives..."
What, pray
tell, is SEIU-UHW calling this new political fund aimed at implementing a secret deal
that would impose a
gag clause on tens of thousands of healthcare workers?
"Californians
for Hospital Accountability and Quality Care."
Way to go, Dave!
If SEIU-UHW
members -- whose maximum dues rate increased to $144 a month on January 1st -- are
wondering where all of their dues dollars are going, they might wanna take a
look at Dave's latest and greatest adventure in fantasy land.
