Posted on Wed, Feb. 16, 2005
BY PHILIP DINE
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - The Department of Labor is trying to stop federal employees from receiving a union newsletter that includes an article critical of President Bush's plans to change Social Security.

The department has distributed the quarterly newsletter since 1978 to 7,500 union members and other Labor Department employees outside of Washington as part of its contract with the union that represents those workers. But officials decided to block distribution of the current edition after learning about a column that referred to "the risky, ill-conceived White House plan to save Social Security by destroying it."

A top department official told managers to "take necessary and reasonable steps to stop distribution of this edition ... any existing bulk mail not distributed should not be distributed," according to an internal memo obtained by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The column, written by a union lobbyist, urged union members to write legislators opposing Bush's plan to change Social Security, saying it "will reward Wall Street by funneling Social Security dollars into risky private accounts." Next to the article in the newsletter was a sample letter for mailing to legislators.

The Labor Department's senior career ethics officer, Robert Shapiro, says the department didn't act because the column opposed Bush's proposal, but because federal anti-lobbying statutes bar the department from spending money to urge citizens to contact legislators about legislation. The newsletter falls under those laws because the department pays to distribute it, he said.

Shapiro said the matter is being referred to the department's inspector general for possible violations of criminal law against lobbying. If enough information is found, it could go to the Justice Department for prosecution, although it's unclear who would be prosecuted.

Critics said the department's rationale was a smokescreen, and said it wasn't the first time the department sought to limit material critical of Bush.

In December 2002, when a newsletter cartoon mocked Bush's tax policies as favoring the wealthy, the Labor Department blocked distribution, said Ron Yarman, president of the National Council of Field Labor Locals, which publishes the newsletter. The union filed a grievance and members got the newsletter. The Labor Department declined to comment this week on that matter.

Other critics note that the administration has had no problem with government employees advocating for its proposals. The Social Security Administration came under fire last month for plans to use employees to convince the public that Social Security is in a crisis and needs private accounts to straighten things out.

Witold Skwierczynski, president of the union representing 28,000 Social Security field workers, says that since he began working at the Social Security Administration in 1973 he'd never before seen employees told to support specific administration policies.

"Now, seeing censorship in the Department of Labor or any other agency, indicates how important this issue is to the Bush administration," he said Wednesday.

"What this reflects is an administration that's very sensitive to criticism," said Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution. "The administration is at the moment staking its domestic legacy on this one particular piece of legislation, and it's quite clear that the word has gone out."

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the administration appeared to be "stifling the viewpoints" of critics and noted that it has been criticized in recent weeks for having paid conservative pundits for favorable commentary. "It's worse in this situation, because this is a union publication that goes to their members," he said. He said the department was using a "series of excuses" to justify its actions.

The column in question was written by Jim Lynch, a lobbyist for the union. The dust-up began when Yarman learned that the department's Boston region, which covers New England, refused to forward the newsletter to members. He asked Labor Department officials in Washington to step in, but they instead decided that the article was "not appropriate."

An e-mail sent Jan. 28 by Sandra Keppley, the Labor Department's director of labor relations, instructed that the newsletter be blocked and raised the problem of whether it contained anything that identified it as being official department material.

In an e-mail Feb. 2, she said the newsletter could include only material of direct interest to union members, while "changes to Social Security are presumably of interest to all Americans." Then she cited the issue of lobbying regulations.

In addition to New England, distribution was also prevented in the Dallas- based region, which covers Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana and Arkansas; and in the New York-based region, which also covers New Jersey and Puerto Rico - accounting for half the department's field employees.

Yarman said the newsletter has criticized previous presidents of both parties.

For example, in December 1999 the paper ran a front-page story saying the Clinton administration was pressuring the Labor Department to open more of its jobs to private contractors. A related piece took on Vice President Al Gore for defending that policy and said the union for that reason had withheld support for Gore's presidential bid. No one tried to quash that newsletter, Yarman said.

Brookings' Hess said the Labor Department, "in looking for an excuse," may have found a legitimate one in the anti-lobbying statute. But he called the effort "pretty counterproductive, for all the time and taxpayer money they're spending on this."

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