HARRISBURG, Pa. – Pennsylvania state Sen. Scott Wagner doesn’t think very highly of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, and the Republican lawmaker is calling the teachers union out on its self-serving political agenda.

Wagner, who is running for reelection, recently placed full-page advertisements in Pennsylvania newspapers accusing the PSEA of manipulating its members, lobbying to keep automatic dues deductions and obstructing long overdue pension reforms in its “war on taxpayers,” the York Dispatch reports.

The PSEA’s obstruction, Wagner said, is the reason “nothing has gotten done in Harrisburg,” according to the ads.

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“Wagner said some PSEA funds are used to spread information against issues including pension reform; some funds to advocate for candidates such as Tom Wolf for governor,” the Dispatch reports.

“It’s almost like they’re brainwashing their members,” Wagner said.

Wagner contends that taxpayer resources should not be used to collect dues for a private entity, despite a claim by state treasurer Rob McCord in June that the cost to the state is only about $100 per year.

“We think that number is suspect,” Wagner’s chief of staff, Jason High, told the Dispatch, adding that McCord has received political contributions from the PSEA and other unions in the past.

High rightly asserts that “any money that comes from taxpayers in unethical” when it’s used to collect dues for the teachers union. The obvious problem is that many teachers likely don’t agree with the PSEA’s far-left positions on many issues – such as abortion, pension reform, gay rights, LGBT policies and other topics – but don’t fully understand that the union uses teacher contributions to champion those causes.

PSEA spokesman Wythe Keever, of course, argues that Wagner’s intent with the ads is “to silence the opposition” to reforms Wagner has pushed in the General Assembly.

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“They want to silence teachers’ voices in regard to issues at their schools,” he told the Dispatch.

It seems the same could be said of union officials who develop a political agenda that often has less to do with educating Pennsylvania students than with promoting Big Labor’s political priorities. Those priorities, coincidentally or not, often conflict with the wants and needs of rank-and-file teachers, who have little to no input in union politics.

In 2014, the PSEA will collect nearly $100 million from roughly 185,000 members across the state, a staggering amount that left many who viewed Wagner’s ads “totally amazed,” the senator told the Dispatch.

Those members deserve to know how their dues dollars and political contributions are spent. They need to understand that their union lobbies lawmakers on issues well beyond education, and puts nearly all of its political support behind Democrats and far-left liberals who have done little besides obstruct important reforms in recent years.

Since the PSEA typically doesn’t discuss its political bias, it’s important for lawmakers like Wagner to highlight these problems for them, and he seems to be doing a pretty good job.

The message has likely reached tens of thousands of Pennsylvania taxpayers, including many teachers, through the newspaper advertisements, and that’s on top of the roughly 8,000 people who received the same information through subscriptions to Wagner’s campaign website.