FL Teachers' Union paid for chief's opulent lifestyle - $2,000-a-night suite raised red flags

Miami Herald ^ | May 18,2003 | MANNY GARCIA AND JOE MOZINGO jmozingo@herald.com

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Florida blacks eye boycott over graduation exam*** "This is a time to celebrate, this is not a time to boycott," Mr. Bush said at a press conference where he emphasized his support of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. "Look at these numbers and look at the results we have achieved and take another action."

Some lawmakers and activists are demanding that Mr. Bush allow nearly 13,000 students, about half of them blacks and Hispanics in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area, to skirt the requirement that they pass the test to graduate this year, and say that the governor is setting the bar too high. ***

[Cincinatus' Wife]

NEA challenged on political outlays - Teacher's union fields "army of campaign workers"***As much as one-third of the tax-exempt National Education Association's yearly $271 million income goes toward politically related activities, according to union documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service. The documents show that the 2.7 million-member teacher's union spends millions annually to field what one critic calls an "army of campaign workers," while maintaining that it spends nothing on politics.

The NEA has avoided millions of dollars in federal and D.C. income taxes every year for political activities that are not tax-exempt, says the Landmark Legal Foundation, a Herndon-based public-interest group that has asked the IRS to investigate and recoup the money. ***

[Cincinatus' Wife]

TEACHERS BACK GORE WITH MONEY, MUSCLE *** Comer is just one reason that teachers are considered one of the most powerful and effective interest groups in presidential politics. Months before most other Democratic constituencies began organizing, the NEA was in the field. Now, in the general election, Comer and the NEA are organizing again to help Gore try to beat Texas Governor George W. Bush the way he beat Bradley during the primaries.

From their top union leaders in Washington to their 16,000 local associations and 2.5 million members in cities and towns, the teachers are involved in every aspect of the 2000 presidential race.

''As far back as I can remember, a significant portion of all convention delegates were members of NEA,'' said Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University political science professor. ''They were certainly the group that Jimmy Carter mobilized in 1976, and they have been a major element of every winning coalition of every Democratic nominee.''

Unlike President Clinton, Baker said, Gore has hewed close to the needs and desires of the teachers as he seeks their help in his campaign. And Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that if Gore wins, there will be a payoff for teachers unions. ***

[Cincinatus' Wife]

AFT/NEA Presidents Call for Partnerships to Strengthen Teacher Quality***WASHINGTON - September 25 - Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association (NEA), and Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), today called on their members across the country to forge partnerships in their communities to strengthen America's teaching force. Both spoke at the opening of a national conference on teacher quality that the two unions are sponsoring.***

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This is being implemented state by state to strengthen union clout.

[Highest Authority]

The NEA is a corrupt wing of the DemonRAT party! When will all of it's members wise up and revolt?

[anniegetyourgun]

I appreciate Manny & Mo writing this expose. But I'm not sure that anyone with kids in the failed experiment called government schools will really care. They seem bent on making the worst possible choice for their kids while pretending it's all good.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

LANDMARK FILES COMPLAINTS WITH IRS AND FEC AGAINST THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

[aruanan]

This guy is why we as a society haven't improved over the 19th century's practice of tarring, feathering, and running such folks out of town on a rail. With the prospect of more of the latter, we'd have less of the former.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

You are correct. They just keep bumping these crooks up the ladder.

Teachers' union raided in Miami-Dade - Investigators seek to prove money siphoned off for perks

"In a hole looking up" Crisis develops just as teachers need union most

[yoe]

Could you provide some pictures of the union members involved, especially Pat and Donna Tornillo, embezzlers have a look about them....

[Cincinatus' Wife]

TORNILLO

[mewzilla]

Here's a question I've got, sort of related to the credit card angle: Can teachers in FL claim a sales tax exemption for school-related purchases? And do any of them abuse the privilege? Does anyone check?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

United Way 2002 campaign co-chair Pat Tornillo and Donna Tornillo

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I don't know. But if I ventured a guess....

[mewzilla]

Someone should check. If it's as easy to abuse down there as it is up here, I'll bet a lot of money is being siphoned out of the state's coffers.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

UTD Executive Offices

This Department is responsible for:
· The daily management and oversight of all UTD Departments
· Working as liaison to School Board and M-DCPS Administrators
· Contract Negotiations
· Lobbying for educational laws and reforms in the Legislature

[Paul C. Jesup]

Unions are designed to enslave the workers to government.

[jwh_Denver]

What's the beef here? Tornillos is one of the elite. Why he can spend as much money on lavish things he wants just as long as he represents the serfs I mean the teachers he touts for. Who cares anyway? So many teachers would rather teach communism than the Constitution.

[kittymyrib]

Do I correctly recall that the FL teacher's union put up their property as colateral for a loan so they could give a huge amount to the Gore campaign? No wonder they are so afraid of an FBI investigation! They won't have any money to give the dems next year, except for the cash they extract from the stupid sheeple teachers' paychecks, of course.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

***The New-Jersey-born Tornillo was elected president of the Dade Classroom Teachers Association by a 72-vote margin in 1962. Back then, it was little more than a parochial, all-white social club.

After negotiating a merger with the black teachers bargaining unit, Tornillo broadened the power and reach, forming the United Teachers of Dade. Since then, the union has become a formidable force in Miami-Dade County, where its roster of school board candidates with rare exception wins at the polls, and in the Florida Democratic Party, where the union's blessing helped a relatively unknown lawyer, Bill McBride, beat former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno for the gubernatorial nomination.

At the same time, Tornillo's shop charges the highest teacher union dues in Florida. The rates are needed to cover $4 million in annual payroll, with a dozen administrators earning six-figure salaries. Tornillo takes home $243,000.

Critics point out that Tornillo has used the UTD's clout to reach into nontraditional union ventures such as buying real estate, running charter schools and getting involved in big-money school district contracting.

Tornillo demanded that the board give a nine-figure contract to HIP HealthCare in 1996 and again in 2001 against a consultant's advice. The company's lobbyist, and Tornillo confidant, Ric Sisser, pocketed at least $4 million on the deal. The union also ensured, as part of its contract, that only one supplemental insurance broker could come to schools and sell products to the county's largest workforce: the Public Employee Services Company.

PESCO, whose office is in the ground floor of the UTD building, was founded by a Tornillo associate, Mike Sheridan. The union owns 19,000 shares of PESCO stock. Until recently, Tornillo also sat on the board of another Sheridan company, the Fringe Benefits Management Co., which has had the School Board contract to administer supplemental insurance plans -- or flex benefits -- since the mid-1980s. *** Source