House committee probes Chicago Teachers Union after years of missing financial audits 

Congressional lawmakers are demanding that the Chicago Teachers Union release years of missing financial audits, intensifying scrutiny about why the union is refusing to provide them in the first place.  

The U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce sent a letter to the union as part of its investigation for the union’s alleged refusal to provide its own members with financial records of how their money has been spent for five years. 

“The Committee understands that CTU leadership has actively sought to keep complete financial information from its own members who continue to request that audits be published,” the letter states. “This failure runs afoul of CTU’s own by-laws which require the union’s secretary to ‘furnish an audited report of the Union which shall be printed in the Union’s publication.’” 

The lawmakers accused the union of undertaking a “half-decade long, concerted effort” to deny its members complete audit information and asked it to produce the requested records by Dec. 8.  

The federal inquiry comes as a lawsuit has been proceeding against the CTU for more than a year, as several of the union’s dues-paying members have sought to compel it to release the audits. 

“Had CTU provided these documents to our clients when they requested them, neither our lawsuit, nor the Committee’s inquiry would have been necessary,” Liberty Justice Center Senior Counsel Ángel Valencia said in a statement. “Instead CTU has spent members’ union dues on legal fees trying to avoid transparency and accountability of their financial books.” 

Until the CTU complies with its bylaws and provides the records, Valencia said the lawsuit will continue. “We are hopeful that the Committee’s demands will help deliver justice for our clients,” he said, “along with the annual financial audits that have been missing for more than five years.” 

The Chicago Teachers Union, when reached by The Lion, pointed to a statement that it would cooperate with Congress but that the federal probe was a “waste of time.” 

“It is a waste of time, and it’s a waste of resources, but we will be good citizens, and we will be responding with any responsive documents,” Bromwich told the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ. “There is much less here than meets the eye.” 

Liberty Justice Center has repeatedly insisted it would drop the lawsuit if the union furnishes the full missing audits and commits to furnishing them in the future. “We’ve made the offer to them multiple times, and they’ve declined,” a lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Dean McGee, told The Lion previously. “What are they hiding?”