Author Profile

Jon Riches

General counsel, Goldwater Institute

Jon Riches is the Director of National Litigation for the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation and General Counsel for the Institute. He litigates in federal and state trial and appellate courts in the areas of economic liberty, taxpayer rights, public union and pension reform, government transparency, and school choice, among others.

Latest Columns

Environment

Taxpayer-funded union work violates the Texas Constitution

By Robert Henneke and Jon Riches, Oct. 14, 2016

Under a practice called union "release time," government agencies allow public employees to be "released" from the jobs for which they were hired and instead be assigned to work for a private labor union. This is not only bad policy, it's also unconstitutional in Texas.