Today’s offering from the folks at PolitiFactRI addresses a statistic on Illinois child care programs cited by Minnesota child care provider Jennifer Parrish as she urged her counterparts in Rhode Island not to authorize the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to act as a middleman between them and the state (while receiving dues automatically deducted from their checks).

My first reaction was to wonder why PolitiFact doesn’t disclose that Providence Journal reporters are members of the AFL-CIO labor union. After all, they disclose that at least one of the two advocacy groups whom they contacted as part of the “investigation” admits to being an ally of the SEIU.*  The potential pro-union bias of the investigator and judges of the truth would seem to be at least as relevant.

Looking into the matter, and reviewing the email correspondence between Parrish and Greg Smith, the Providence Journal reporter who did the investigating, brings me to the conclusion that “journalistic activism” might be a better description than mere “bias.”

The statement that Smith “tested” came from an op-ed of Parrish’s that the Providence Journal published on September 5, which appeared on the Current a week before.  Specifically: “Six years after unionization, 20,000 fewer children in Illinois were being served by the Child Care and Development Fund program.”  Although finding Parrish’s statement absolutely true (accounting for rounding), PolitiFact ruled as follows:

Parrish offered only anecdotal evidence that the drop was related to unionization and two Illinois advocacy groups said it was more likely caused by other factors, such as the economic downturn and tightening of state qualifications for providers and eligibility requirements for children.

Because the statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, the judges rate it Mostly False.

The problem is that the statement that they’ve deemed “mostly false” was actually an assumption of PolitiFact’s, not a statement of Parrish’s.  Here’s the context of the sentence that Smith investigated (emphasis added):

In Illinois, for example, only a tiny percentage of the providers (paying up to $900 per year in dues and fees) received health insurance.  The “raises” in reimbursement rates the union has negotiated have been minimal; barely keeping up with the rising cost of child care. Six years after unionization, 20,000 fewer children in Illinois were being served by the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) program.

So who actually benefits from child care unionization? The SEIU does. Since it began charging dues and fees, the SEIU has taken a staggering $60 million dollars from the child care providers in Illinois.

Parrish asserts no causal relationship between the unionization and the reduction in children served.  Rather, it looks to me like the statistic in question is presented as another indication of something that the union didn’t accomplish for providers — namely, to advocate for an increase in the number of potential clients for its members.  Few providers got healthcare; reimbursement rates didn’t go up substantially; and far from securing an increase in the number of children seeking care, the union didn’t stop a reduction of the subsidized pool of customers.

On its face, this is at least a potential interpretation of her intent, and in an email to Smith, Parrish confirmed that it was in fact the one she meant:

My reason for including this information in my op-ed was to counter claims by union supporters that unionizing child care will somehow lead to more children being served through the child care assistance program. The fact I quoted proves that this did not happen in Illinois.

It’s possible that Parrish said something different during a phone conversation with Smith prior to their exchange of emails, but she contends that this was not the case. According to Parrish, Smith did not tell her that his “interview” was being conducted to determine the truth of her statement, rather than a more-objective report about the effects of unionization. In other words, she approached the conversation in the spirit of helping the reporter to find out the extent to which unionization might have played a role in the reduction of children served.

It wasn’t until after the panel of Providence Journal judges had already found her to be a liar that Smith mentioned “the fact-checking exercise that led [him] to call” her, prompting the response that I quote above.

My own biases are well known, but it seems to me that the Providence Journal would better serve the people of Rhode Island by investigating the promises being made by the labor union that wants to increase its political influence in our state, the SEIU.  Instead, reporter Katherine Gregg picks one of the most successful child care provider contracts in the country for “insight” into what Rhode Island providers can expect.  (It might be more true to call that one of the only successful child care provider contracts, considering that fewer than half of the states that have seen such unionization actually have active contracts.)

Also instead of investigating the union that’s trying to get something out of Rhode Island government, the newspaper’s “fact checking” feature puts words into the mouth of a woman who opposes the power grab in an attempt to discredit her.  Readers should give careful consideration before deciding who ought to be discredited in this incident.

 

* According to research that Parrish has done for a forthcoming article, both groups cited by PolitiFact receive money annually from the SEIU.