SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan Suffers $4.1 Million Self-Inflicted Blunder in Ohio Ballot Initiative

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

Just in case Dave Regan’s lopsided defeat on last week’s ballot measures wasn’t bad enough, he suffered an even more embarrassing ballot-initiative blunder in his home state of Ohio.

In a f*ck-up of interstellar proportions, Regan’s Ohio dialysis initiative was knocked off the ballot because, well, Dave forgot to have his signature-gatherers fill out a required state form.

Way to go, Dave!

It gets worse. Ya see, Dave didn’t happen to notice his mistake until he’d already spent upwards of $4.1 million on his Ohio initiative. D’oh!

Of course, we’ve all made mistakes, right? But have you ever made a $4 million mistake? And it wasn’t even Dave’s money!

Here’s what happened.

After Regan’s SEIU-UHW filed an initiative against the kidney dialysis industry in California, Dave then filed copycat initiatives in both Arizona and Ohio in an apparent attempt to "up the ante" on industry leaders.

Months later, Regan abandoned his effort in Arizona.

But in Ohio, Dave soldiered on like a preacher consumed by the holy spirit. He spent millions on signature gatherers in a fervent quest to qualify his initiative, called the “Kidney Dialysis Patient Protection Amendment.”

In fact, Dave paid $3.6 million to a California signature-gathering company called PCI Consultants (headed by Angelo Paparella) to run his Ohio effort, according to campaign expenditure records from the Ohio Secretary of State.

And he paid thousands to the law firm of his private Ohio attorney, Michael Hunter of “Hunter, Carnahan, Shoub, Byard, & Harshman.”

In late July, Regan triumphantly filed 296,000 signatures to try to qualify his constitutional amendment for the ballot. But he was 9,500 signatures short. Fortunately for Dave, the Ohio Constitution gave him ten more days to collect the missing signatures. One more chance!

Ten days later, after spending even more money on his signature-gathering campaign, Regan finally hit the target. Except for one important thing. Dave’s crack team forgot to have the signature gatherers sign a state-required form required before collecting voter signatures. Whoops!

Dave’s opponents, the Ohio Renal Association, leapt on Dave’s blunder like a pack of hungry wolves on a T-bone steak. They sued to block Dave’s initiative on the grounds that his signatures were invalid. In a 7-0 decision, the Ohio Supreme Court agreed, thereby knocking Dave’s multimillion dollar initiative off the November 2018 ballot. 

(Jackie Borchardt, “Ohio kidney dialysis ballot issue invalidated by state Supreme Court,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 13, 2018; Laura A. Bischoff and Kaitlin Schroeder, “Ohio Supreme Court kicks kidney dialysis issue off the November ballot,” Dayton Daily News, August 13, 2018.)

When the court’s decision was announced, it must’ve been quite a scene at the Renal Association… execs doing back flips, taunting Dave for his colossal blunder, etc.

It turns out that Dave’s self-inflicted failure is even worse than it first appears.

Why?

In 2016, Regan committed the same exact dumb-ass blunder in Arizona, which caused another one of Dave’s initiatives to be stripped from that state’s ballot.

How did George W. Bush put it? “Fool me once, shame on... Fool me twice, shame on...” Except, of course, George kinda garbled it all up. (Here’s the YouTube video.)

So what’s up with Dave?

Maybe his memory ain’t so good these days. Perhaps his fistfight in a Sacramento bar and his headline-grabbing assault on a process-server have resulted in the premature demise of a few of Dave’s brain cells.

But you gotta hand it to Dave. When he f*cks up, he really f*cks up big-time.

According to campaign disclosure records, Regan spent $4.1 million on his Ohio campaign. And in June, he loaned $1.7 million of SEIU-UHW’s funds to the Ohio campaign. That money has not been repaid, according to the Ohio Secretary of State. These figures don’t include all of the national TV advertising, which tallied millions more.

Regular people get fired if we make a $50 screw-up at work.

So why isn’t Dave held accountable for his repeated multi-million-dollar blunders? Shouldn’t he be fired?

To view campaign expenditure records, go to the Ohio Secretary of State’s website and retrieve records for Regan’s PAC: “Ohioans for Kidney Dialysis Patient Protection” (PAC Registration No. BI1793). The PAC’s address is: 777 S. Figueroa Street Suite 4050 Los Angeles, CA 90017.

More Bumps in the Road for Dave Regan’s Ballot-Initiative Bonanza

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan is facing more problems in his quest to pass at least ten ballot initiatives during 2018.

After first abandoning his effort to place an initiative on Arizona’s November ballot targeting the kidney dialysis industry, Regan then dropped his plans for ballot measures in three California cities “after not gathering enough signatures,” according to the East Bay Times.

The three measures would have targeted Stanford Health Care in the cities of Pleasanton, Emeryville and Redwood City. Regan tried to use the threat of his ballot initiatives to pressure Stanford into signing a special unionization deal. (Angela Ruggeiro, “Livermore sued over city measure for healthcare costs; asks court to rule on legality,” East Bay Times, August 10, 2018)

Earlier this year, the City of Emeryville sued SEIU-UHW alleging that Regan’s ballot initiative is unconstitutional, violates due process rules, and is preempted by state and federal laws.

In a fourth city in the San Francisco Bay Area – Livermore -- Regan successfully gathered enough signatures to qualify his anti-Stanford initiative for the citywide ballot. However, Diamond Dave and his attorneys are now locked in dueling lawsuits with the city.

On August 2, Regan sued the City of Livermore alleging that the ballot language approved by the City Council is biased. The lawsuit was filed in Alameda County Superior Court, according to press accounts and SEIU-UHW’s website.

Meanwhile, the City of Livermore has filed a court petition challenging the constitutionality of Regan’s ballot initiative. The city says healthcare prices are governed by statewide rules and that it would be improper for the city to create its own separate standards. The city attorney “likened the scenario to if Livermore adopted a different vehicle code, just for the city, which would go against state vehicle codes.”

Livermore City Attorney Jason Alcala

As the lawsuits move forward, pin-striped lawyers and pollsters and consultants are chanting “Ka-Ching!” as the price tag on Regan’s 2018 ballot-initiative bonanza soars ever higher.

Why is the City of Livermore against Regan’s ballot initiative?

If approved by voters, the measure would force the city to spend nearly $2 million a year to implement and administer Regan’s initiative, according to experts hired by city officials. Additionally, city officials fear that Regan’s initiative would drive hospitals, clinics and other healthcare providers out of the city.

Late last year, Regan apparently launched his ballot-initiative bonanza with great hopes… despite the failure of his past efforts. In 2018, Regan introduced more ballot initiatives than during the past six years combined.

So far, however, Regan has come up empty-handed... and it’s unlikely he’ll eke out any deals at this stage of the game. Once the initiatives have been put on the ballot, there’s little incentive for the targeted companies to negotiate with Regan because he no longer has the power to remove the initiatives from the ballot.

Regan -- who believes ballot initiatives are some kind of miraculous solution for the profound problems gripping the US labor movement -- has dumped more than $10 million of his members’ funds into initiatives during 2018.

What could workers have done with this money?

And what’ll happen to Diamond Dave if he ends the year without a single unionization deal?

Stay tuned.  

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan Drops Ballot Initiative in Arizona

Dave Regan has dropped his effort to place an initiative targeting the kidney dialysis industry on Arizona’s statewide ballot, according to a press outlet. (Howard Fischer, “Union Gives up on Dialysis Initiative,” The Daily Courier, July 4, 2018)

Here’s the background.

After Regan first filed an initiative against the kidney dialysis industry in California, he then filed copycat initiatives in both Arizona and Ohio in an apparent attempt to "up the ante" on industry leaders. Regan apparently hoped the pressure would prompt industry leaders to sign a special unionization deal with him in exchange for his commitment to withdraw the initiatives from the ballots, as he did in a secret deal with executives at the California Hospital Association (CHA).

The secret deal with the CHA, which later came to light through litigation, sold out the workers that Regan claimed to be advocating for – including banning them from striking and even criticizing their employers’ multi-million dollar salaries.

To date, Regan has spent upwards of $6 million of SEIU-UHW’s funds on his California kidney-dialysis initiative. Nonetheless, dialysis industry officials have failed to bite on Regan’s bait. So… Regan and SEIU-UHW are now heading towards a multi-million dollar election battle in November.

Regan has plowed millions of dollars of the union’s resources into his high-stakes (and high-cost) game of chicken with dialysis industry officials. Regan once touted his ballot initiative strategy as an “audacious new proposal to save the labor movement,” even though it has drained tens of millions of dollars from SEIU-UHW’s coffers without leading to the unionization of a single healthcare worker.

Here are some excerpts from the article about Regan’s initiative in Arizona:

A California union has given up on its plan to ask Arizona voters to impose new service and cost restrictions on companies that perform dialysis.

Sean Wherley, spokesman for Service Employees International Union, said on Monday his organization has decided to focus its efforts elsewhere.

Wherley conceded the measure was aimed specifically at two firms: Fresenius Kidney Care and DaVita Kidney care. He said the two control more than 80 percent of the licensed dialysis centers in the state. Potentially more significant, Wherley acknowledged that both operate here without SEIU employees.

This isn’t the first time SEIU had started petition drives in its fights with employers.

Two years ago it crafted an initiative drive to cap the pay of hospital executives at no more than what the president of the United States is paid, or $450,000 a year. But after gathering what it said was more than 281,000 signatures — far more than needed — the union decided to scrap the effort in the face of challenges to the validity of many of those signatures.

But Wherley sidestepped questions Monday about whether the SEIU was simply using the Arizona initiative process for political purposes in the union’s ongoing battles with hospitals and health care employers.

“There’s only so many states that have ballot initiatives,’’ he said.

“So we look at them, where does SEIU have a presence, where can health care workers be benefited, where can patients be benefited,’’ Wherley said. “That’s kind of the calculus that decides where we introduce an initiative and where we submit signatures to qualify.’’

In the end, Wherley said, the union decided to not even try to collect signatures on the Arizona proposal.

Source: Dave Regan Will Withdraw Ballot Initiative Targeting Kaiser Permanente

According to an internal source, SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan will soon withdraw the California ballot initiative he recently filed against Kaiser Permanente.

There’s no official confirmation of the withdrawal yet, but Tasty’s internal sources say it’s coming.

Last week, top officials from the labor-management partnership unions convened in Washington DC for a closed-door meeting with Kaiser CEO Bernard Tyson. 

At a pre-meeting, some union leaders reportedly discussed the idea of tossing SEIU-UHW out of the labor-management partnership. Kaiser earlier barred SEIU-UHW from participating in the partnership’s 2018 national bargaining.

Meanwhile, last week Kaiser mounted a direct-mail campaign targeting SEIU-UHW’s members with news that Regan’s initiative -- which could place a cap Kaiser’s future revenues -- would undermine the HMO’s ability to fund SEIU-UHW members’ pensions and other benefits.

Regan’s withdrawal of the initiative is not a shocker. After all, Regan has a track record of committing a staggering series of f*uck-ups when it comes to is ballot initiatives.

In 2016, Regan was forced to withdraw an Arizona ballot initiative targeting the hospital industry after hiring paid circulators who collected 281,000 signatures from voters. Why? Regan apparently forgot to make sure the signature-gatherers were legally qualified to collect signatures. Whoops!

Also in 2016, Regan was forced to drop a California ballot initiative against the California Hospital Association because it violated a gag clause that Regan himself had earlier signed as part of his secret deal with hospital executives.

In each withdrawal, Regan had already spent millions of SEIU-UHW members’ funds on the failed efforts.

On Monday, Politico’s Victoria Colliver also noted Regan’s record of misfiring on his million-dollar ballot initiatives.

SEIU-UHW has a history of filing ballot measures that would affect organizations whose workers it represents, or wants to. Most of them never actually get voted on: The union has often dropped them partway through the arduous ballot-qualification process…

The referendum strategy doesn't come cheap. It costs money to file measures, pay people to gather signatures, hire lawyers to review language and fend off challenges, and foot the bill for advertising and other expenses associated with mounting what is basically a political campaign.

The union has spent $21.2 million on ballot measures in California since the 2012 election cycle…

Source: Regan Considers Raid on SEIU-UHW's Strike Fund to Finance More Ballot Initiatives

Dave Regan is reportedly considering a scheme to divert millions of dollars from SEIU-UHW members’ strike fund so he can spend more money on political campaigns, according to an inside source.

Here’s what the source says:

Regan wants money to run more statewide ballot initiatives, which he’s attempted to use (umm, very unsuccessfully) in both California and Arizona.

But ballot initiatives are expensive. 

Regan must hire signature-gatherers to collect millions of signatures from voters to qualify each initiative for the ballot. And then he must launch publicity campaigns to win public support.

In California, Regan reportedly spent upwards of $30 million on failed ballot initiatives targeting the California Hospital Association in hopes of inking a sweetheart partnership agreement with hospital CEOs.

According to Tasty’s source, Regan has considered using another source of money to fund more ballot initiatives -- he thought about boosting SEIU-UHW members’ monthly union dues. However, a dues increase would require a vote of the membership, which Regan and his aides concluded he would lose.

So… Regan reportedly began eyeing SEIU-UHW members’ strike fund.

What’s the strike fund?

SEIU-UHW’s Constitution (Article XV) says the “strike fund is to be used for any and all strikes, strike-related activities, lockouts and to protect the integrity and welfare of the Union as determined by the Executive Board.”

How’s it funded?

One dollar per month is set aside from each member’s union dues to finance the strike fund, according to the union's constitution.

So how can Regan get his hands on the strike fund?

Apparently, he would need to convince the Executive Board that funding ballot initiatives is somehow a “strike-related activity” or is necessary “to protect the integrity and welfare of the Union.”

What a joke, right?

If Executive Board members buy into Regan’s fraudulent scheme, they’ll be leaving the union’s members without a strike fund to defend against hospital corporations trying to slash their wages and benefits.

Stay tuned.

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan Misfires (AGAIN) on Ballot Initiative

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.”

 

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?

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan Takes His Ballot Initiative Bamboozle to Arizona

Dave Regan has begun circulating a copycat ballot initiative in Arizona as part of his latest attempt to pressure the California Hospital Association (CHA) into signing another secret sweetheart deal with SEIU-UHW.

According to internal SEIU-UHW documents, Regan hopes the threat of an Arizona ballot initiative will leverage several large multi-state hospital corporations to convince CHA’s Duane Dauner into inking another deal with Regan in California.

Regan's Arizona initiative -- called the "Hospital Executive Compensation Act" -- would cap hospital executives' pay at $450,000 per year. It’s identical to the initiatives that Regan filed -- and has twice withdrawn -- in California.

According to records from the Arizona Secretary of State (see below), SEIU-UHW staffers Arianna Jimenez and Cass Gualvez filed the initiative on February 12. By July 7, SEIU-UHW must collect more than 150,000 valid signatures in order to qualify the measure for the state's November 2016 ballot.

An internal SEIU-UHW document discusses Regan’s filing of a California measure (the "Hospital Executive Compensation Act of 2016"), for which SEIU-UHW is now circulating petitions among voters.

The document goes on to state that SEIU-UHW filed "a similar Executive Compensation initiative…in Arizona where several of our employers such as Dignity [Healthcare], Tenet [Healthcare] and CHS [Community Health Systems] are big players in the market." (See full document below.)

Apparently, Regan hopes that CEOs from the three companies will be willing to do some horse-trading in order to get SEIU-UHW to drop its ballot initiative.

In California, legislators enacted a law that criminalizes using ballot initiatives to extort "any thing of value… for the purpose of withdrawing an initiative petition." (Senate Bill 1253, authored by former Sen. Darrell Steinberg). The law was enacted after two rounds of Regan's ballot initiative bamboozle.

For four years, now, Regan’s ballot initiative strategy has been an utter (and massively expensive) failure in California. Regan has poured more than $25 million of SEIU-UHW members' dues into the initiatives. Nonetheless, Regan's "partnership" dreams have exploded in flames as California hospital executives abandoned and then sued SEIU-UHW in response to Regan's violation of an embarrassing "gag clause" penned by Regan.

Today, Regan is even the subject of a criminal investigation after allegedly breaking the arm of a CHA process server. The criminal probe is reportedly in the hands of the Contra Costa County District Attorney.

What's next?

SEIU-UHW's members should get ready to see millions more of their dues dollars disappear down the purple toilet.

 

Regan selling snake oil to the California public

And Arizonans should be prepared to see Regan deliver his best impersonation of a traveling snake oil salesman. As he did in California, Regan will shower the public with lies about how SEIU-UHW will use the ballot initiative to fight the Good Fight for the Little Man against fatcat CEOs.

But make no mistake, Arizonans. Wall Street Dave has twice "played" Californians like so many pawns on a board game. After promising populist-sounding reforms, Regan will sell you out at the drop of a hat so he can seal his own deal with hospital CEOs. 

In fact, in California, Regan not only dumped SEIU-UHW's ballot initiative in exchange for a secret deal with CEOs, he also signed a gag clause that blocked SEIU-UHW, its members, and allies from even uttering a peep about CEOs’ multi-million-dollar paychecks for a multi-year period. So much for the public interest!

This, my friends, apparently is Regan's "innovative" strategy for "rebuilding" the labor movement… by, umm, destroying the public's trust in unions that should be fighting against the billionaire class rather than secretly colluding with them.

  SEIU-UHW's Arizona Ballot Initiative: "Hospital Executive Compensation Act of 2016"

  SEIU-UHW Internal Document on Ballot Initiatives: 2016