The Chicago Teachers Union is really upset.
Apparently, it has reached its tipping point over a cartoon — one executed, the CTU says, as part of a “smear campaign.” In response, the union has filed a defamation lawsuit against three persistent civic watchdog groups. The offending cartoon – which apparently struck a sensitive nerve — depicts the union’s leadership stirring a bubbling cauldron over an open fire beneath the caption, “Cooking the Books.”
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No one’s claimed official credit for the cartoon.
CTU President Stacey Davis Gates — whose own son reportedly attends a private school — isn’t about to lower herself to personally answer accusations of alleged misuse of union funds. She’ll have her day in court instead: where she may find herself reviewing whatever financial skeletons have been unearthed by the very people she is naming as defendants: The Illinois Policy Institute, its Chicago Policy Center, and the Liberty Justice Center.
If President Gates were to take a hard, close look at the brouhaha created by the civic groups, she might candidly acknowledge what they are actually after: getting the union to open its books.
What Gates calls a “smear campaign designed to inflict maximum reputational harm,” the civic groups view rather differently — as a campaign of transparency.
It doesn’t help matters, from the union’s perspective, that leading the charge are those pesky do-gooders — sometimes branded as “conservatives ” — at the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI). They keep asking incendiary questions, prompting the union to erect what amounts to a judicial wall — otherwise known as filing a lawsuit this month.
No matter: The IPI says it has already uncovered early red flags involving what it describes as allegedly reckless and “unaccounted-for” spending.
A few of the expenditures the union might prefer to keep under wraps have nevertheless surfaced. Among them: an estimated more than $23 millionin staff travel expenses — complete with luxury hotels, spas, elaborate poolside dining and other “approved” necessities of union travel.
Then there’s the $173,075 spent on a “recording studio” in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but conveniently classified under “representational activities.” Add another $123,803 listed for “unspecified purposes,” and the CTU accounting begins to look less like a transparent financial report and more like a catalog of perks — all authorized under the union label.
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Perhaps the union’s taste for luxurious travel packages helps explain the several-year gap — or, more precisely, the mysteriously missing annual financial audits — covering 2018 through 2020, according to an IPI media release.
President Gates would most likely dismiss the whole uproar as just another chapter in the “deliberate and coordinated” public attacks. After all, she points out, the union finally released the long-missing audits in January 2026 — covering the overdue years — and even managed to complete the 2023 and 2024 audits.
Her self-congratulatory stance may yet collide with a legal brick wall. The filing of the lawsuit, in retrospect, may have been shortsighted — particularly since the audit results decidedly undercut the very “smear campaign” allegations at the heart of her case.
It was precisely what the IPI expected — and, critics contend, what the CTU preferred to keep beyond the prying eyes of public watchdog groups.
The “incomplete” and “missing” accounting expenditures were apparently only part of the problem. When the independent auditors finally pieced together the financial reporting, their conclusions appeared to validate the concerns that had fueled years of criticism from civic watchdog groups and numerous union members.
Among the findings were financial statements described as “materially and pervasively” misstated; management that had deliberately “elected to omit” CTU activities and affiliated foundations,” and, in the auditor’s ultimate assessment, accounting submissions that failed to “fairly represent CTU’s financial position.”
In other words, the numbers told a story — one that hardly bolstered the CTU’s claim of a “smear campaign” or changed the reality of who was most responsible for the union’s reputational demise.
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Image: Chicago Teachers Union