Local 372 Needs Mail Ballot

Local 372 Needs Mail Ballot

It was typical of the mentality that pervades the leadership of Department of Education Workers Local 372 of District Council 37 that, after being re-elected as its School Aide Chapter Chair, Lily Taylor decided to lash out at this newspaper.

Her gripe? That her main opponent, Tony Ferina, received "coverage completely disproportionate to his level of support in the union," Ms. Taylor said in a statement.

This was interesting on several levels, including the fact that she rebuffed all our previous interview requests. The one that interested us most was that she was deriding his popularity among her 14,000-member chapter despite the fact that in an earlier vote, from which Mr. Ferina was excluded, only 15 members cast ballots for her.

For last week's vote, which went 124-56 in her favor, it could be said that Ms. Taylor's buses beat Mr. Ferina's vans. Most of her supporters were delivered in two 48-seat buses. It would not surprise us if Local 372 paid the tab for that get-out-the-vote initiative: the last thing President Veronica Montgomery-Costa wants is a reformer sitting on her board and perhaps unlocking the mystery of how much her salary has increased since she rammed through a $76,000 pay raise after winning her second term nearly six years ago.

Last week's results were not a good sign for Mr. Ferina and others who are backing Larry Luther Davis as he prepares for a third bid to unseat Ms. Montgomery-Costa later this spring. They have been pushing for a mail ballot, noting that requiring a walk-in vote confined to DC 37's headquarters has produced participation of just 2 percent of the local's roughly 25,000 members during the last two elections.

Mr. Ferina said 200 members have signed a petition for a mail election; unfortunately for him, not enough of them were willing or able to extend their activism to showing up to vote last week.

But the overall total of 203 ballots cast (a third candidate got 23 votes) ought to embarrass DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts. By contrast, Hospital Workers Local 420's election last week was a mail ballot, and 2,183 members participated. That's more than 10 times as many rank and filers getting a say in choosing their leadership than at the School Aide chapter, which has nearly twice as many members.

Then again, a little more democracy could be a dangerous thing at Local 372.