Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW, has committed another
embarrassing ballot-initiative blunder.
In February
of 2016, soon after his secret partnership with the California Hospital Association (CHA) exploded
in flames, Regan filed
a ballot initiative in Arizona designed to cap hospital executives’ salaries. Regan hoped
the initiative would pressure several large multi-state hospital companies to
convince CHA's Duane Dauner to ink
another deal with him.
The Arizona
initiative, “The Hospital Executive Compensation Act,” is virtually identical
to a ballot measure Regan has filed repeatedly and unsuccessfully in California.
Beginning
early in 2016, Regan spent massive amounts of SEIU-UHW members’ dues money to hire paid
circulators to collect 281,000 signatures from Arizona voters to qualify the measure
for the ballot.
However,
Regan apparently forgot to make sure the signature-gatherers were actually
legally qualified to collect signatures. D’OH!!
Under Arizona
law, paid signature-gatherers must register with the Secretary of State’s
office and provide an Arizona address.
This summer,
when Regan triumphantly filed his 281,000 signatures with state officials, the
ballot measure’s opponents quickly noticed that many signature-gatherers had
not complied with state law. They sued SEIU-UHW in Maricopa County Superior
Court to disqualify the signatures and thereby invalidate the initiative.
In August,
just one day before a judge was set to hear the lawsuit, Regan threw in the
towel and withdrew his initiative.
In news
articles, including this one in the Arizona
Capitol Times (“Backers
of Hospital Exec Pay Cap Initiative Dropping Effort,” August 15, 2016),
opponents celebrated Regan’s formidable f*ck-up. They said SEIU-UHW’s decision
to withdraw the initiative “proves that the concerns about the validity of
petition signatures were valid.”
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| Dave "Signature Man" Regan |
This, of
course, is not Regan’s first multi-million dollar mistake.
In June, a
Sacramento Superior Court Judge ordered
Regan to withdraw a nearly identical initiative from next Tuesday’s
California ballot because it violated a gag
clause that Regan himself secretly signed with the California Hospital
Association.
Regan's gag clause -- which he refused to show to SEIU-UHW's Executive Board -- prohibited the union from “raising concerns about…
executive compensation in health care” and blocked SEIU-UHW from supporting any
legislation, initiative, or regulatory action "adverse to the California
hospital industry."
In late
June, Regan was forced to dump his California initiative after having spent at least $5
million of SEIU-UHW members’ dues to collect voters’ signatures.
In 2012,
Regan was forced to withdraw yet another ballot initiative after the Los
Angeles Times discovered that Regan
had inserted hidden loopholes in the initiative’s legal language designed to
exempt two giant hospital corporations -- which control 25% of California’s hospitals
-- from the new requirements.
And earlier
this year, Dishonest Dave snatched
TV headlines by allegedly assaulting a process server trying to deliver
legal records to Regan’s home on behalf of the California Hospital Association.
How does the saying go about the gang that can’t shoot straight?
Maybe
SEIU-UHW members should ask Dave to refund all the money he’s pissed down the
drain via his f*ck-ups, sell-outs and failures, which now tallies more than $30 million by Tasty’s count.
Here’s
another question. Why is Regan still collecting a paycheck? After all, would your
boss keep you on the job if you repeatedly screwed up at a cost of millions and
millions of dollars?
