One of the many important lessons my parents taught me was that, if something looks to good to be true, it probably is. That’s the case with Initiative 1029.

It sounds so good on the surface. I-1029 mandates more training, background checks, and certification for those caring for the elderly and disabled in private homes, adult family homes and assisted-living communities. Who among us doesn’t want to have qualified and trained people looking after our loved ones?

But the problem is, this initiative is unnecessary and incredibly expensive. The taxpayers will pay more than $30 million over the next two years for the state’s portion, just as lawmakers are struggling with a projected $3.2 billion budget deficit. Families will also be forced to pay higher costs for residential care and insurance premiums.

It might be worth it if we were really going to improve care for the elderly and disabled, but I-1029 won’t do that. Background checks are already required for all caregivers, and an independent study by Washington State University concludes that today’s caregivers are already well-trained. In addition, the governor’s task force established to examine this issue concluded there is absolutely no evidence that the training standards proposed by the initiative would improve the actual quality of care.

This same proposal was considered by lawmakers and rejected as unnecessary, ineffective and too expensive. A more reasonable and flexible compromise was rejected by leaders of the powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 775. Unable to convince legislators to buy their proposal, union leaders did an end run around lawmakers and mounted this initiative to go directly to the voters, who don’t have the background on this issue.

If the proposal is so expensive and the training isn’t needed, what’s going on here?

SEIU 775, which represents a third of the home care workers, has spent $900,000 to put this ill-conceived and self-serving initiative before the voters. Why? The union wants to rewrite the rules and get paid tens of millions of state dollars to train their own members. The union already has several million dollars in its training trust, but they aren’t spending their own money, despite their claims that the need is urgent. So, what’s behind I-1029? A clue may be found in the union’s stated goal to “…secur[e] control over our industries and labor markets.”

Why is this proposal so expensive? A big part of the problem is that I-1029 calls for a very rigid, medically oriented training regimen. Currently, after 34 hours of education in fundamental requirements, training is customized to a caregiver’s duties. But I-1029 would require a person who provides companionship and light housekeeping service to go through irrelevant training such as how to safely lift a paraplegic. Even family members taking care of a loved in their home would be mandated to go through the training program.

The excessive training mandated by I-1029 won’t make a person a better caregiver any more than training a person to operate an 18-wheel truck would make them a better driver of their personal car. They are simply skills that will never be used.

I-1029 will make an already critical shortage of caregivers even worse. Today, many caregivers are part-time, giving a few hours of relief each week to family members who shoulder the responsibility of caring for their loved ones. Many of these part-time workers will simply leave their jobs rather than go through I-1029’s extensive training and certification standards.

As we struggle through the current economic crisis and taxpayers in our state face a huge budget deficit, we can’t afford to waste money creating a new state bureaucracy and imposing unnecessary training mandates that do more for their sponsors than for the people.