RALEIGH—The North Carolina State Auditor’s Office released the annual audit of employee association membership counts last week.
The current annual audit, required in state statute, is a tally of certain employee association membership numbers as of Dec. 31, 2023.
The Office of the State Auditor (OSA) requested total membership counts and breakdowns by membership type from each identified association, but it noted that auditors were “limited to verifying and certifying the membership counts provided by the employees’ associations.”
The OSA also obtained payroll deduction reports from various state entities in order to identify membership for the relevant employees’ associations.
According to the audit report, no associations were identified that had at least 40,000 members and had a majority of public school teachers.
Employee associations with at least 2,000 members that have 500 who are state employees, including political and school employees, had the following membership totals:
- State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC): 40,181
- North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE): 25,679
- Southern States Police Benevolent Association (SSPBA): 16,803
- Teamsters Local 391: 8,399
- North Carolina Public Service Workers Union (UE Local 150): 6,319
- Correctional Peace Officers Foundation (CPOF): 2,649
- Professional Educators of North Carolina (PENC): 2,082
Unlike the annual membership audit in previous years, the member count for employee associations under the 2,000-member range was not included in the current audit report. Those associations included the Classroom Teachers Association of North Carolina (CTANC), the North Carolina Troopers Association (NCTA), Teamsters Local 71 and the School Bus Driver Association.
Compared to the membership counts in the 2022 annual audit, SEANC lost 3,713 members, an 8.5% drop, and PENC lost 85, or a 3.9% drop.
The NCAE gained 685 members over the 2022 audit report, however, the organization has refused to turn over its internal membership numbers to the state auditor each year.
The NCAE’s membership total jumped by a whopping 337% in 2021, with 26,204 members over the 5,996 reported in the 2020 audit. In 2020, the NCAE reported membership of 17,154 to its parent organization, the National Education Association. Sometime between 2020 and 2021, the NCAE began including more than just active classroom teachers such as preretired, retired and aspiring educators, and community supporters.
North Carolina State Auditor Jessica Holmes is an attorney who, in the past, represented the NCAE. The audit report did not mention her past affiliation with the organization.
According to the report, the audit took 250 hours to complete and cost $34,000.
