During one of the special session’s rare committee hearings, Senate Ways and Means Chairman Andy Hill zeroed in last week on what Republicans contend is a problem with the way state employee contracts are negotiated between union officials and the governor’s office. And danced close to saying flat out the governor was in the pocket of the unions.

“Can employee unions make contributions to political campaigns?” he asked John Lane, who was representing the Office of Management and Budget. This was presumably a rhetorical question because Hill received money from the Service Employees International Union 775, which represents home health care workers, in last year’s re-election campaign. His next question, also rhetorical: “Employee unions can spend, literally, millions on a governor’s race, correct?

“They literally can make contributions to help someone get elected – which is fine – but then the same person who may have received those contributions is then behind a closed door, negotiating for wage increases…Isn’t that one reason why we might want to make these more transparent?”

Lane responded that he thought the current process is very transparent because all the documents are available after the deal is done and the Legislature has hearings and gets to vote on it. They can reject the deal and send the sides back to the table.

Hill wasn’t buying it but eventually took a step back, saying he thought everything was on the “up and up” but the voters may have concerns because, you know, politicians don’t have that good of a rep. “It’s just one of these trust but verify things.”

 Despite ending on a less confrontational, Reaganesque note, the exchange did not sit well with the SEIU, which may be regretting the $1,700 it gave to Hill instead of his Democratic challenger. The union is “very disappointed” Hill implied there is something corrupt about union contributions, Adam Glickman, its secretary-treasurer, said: “We don’t hear similar concerns about contributions from large corporations that are seeking millions or billions of dollars in tax exemptions.”

Passing the bill to open up state worker contract talks is a GOP condition for keeping the negotiated raises in the budget, Hill said later in the week. But that could become a slippery slope: If legislators want to open up contract talks because they have a major effect on the budget, they might have extend that reasoning to their own closed-door budget meetings. Some reasons for keeping those closed – like participants talking more freely outside the public eye – are the same. So is the excuse that the public eventually sees the end product when a budget gets a committee hearing or a vote.

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