As I mentioned yesterday, I had the opportunity to be a fly on the wall during Governor Schwarzenegger’s press conference on the state’s budget problems.  To be both biased and balanced, I wanted to point out that despite continuing to talk about raising taxes, the Governor was right on target when he talked about the need to cut spending and make government more efficient – harkening back to his campaign slogan of “blowing up boxes” in Sacramento.  When he was asked about what ideological lines the Democrats needed to cross to satisfy him, this was his answer: 

The Governor is doing the right thing by pushing for fixes to the abuses of overtime, sick leave and holidays – these should be easy items for Republicans to support (though as I have said before, Republican legislators are correct in requiring a real spending cap be a required part of any ultimate agreement).  It seems like he’s finally following through on some of the California Performance Review recommendations — hopefully he’ll follow through this time. 

The unions’ grip on the Democrats is so strong that despite a historic revenue shortfall they don’t have the guts to get rid of government waste.  The Governor’s press office went on the offensive yesterday, sending out this article from the SF Chronicle that appeared in June of last year that explained that state employees were able to collect $2.1 billion in overtime last year.  The paper found a nurse in a state prison had made about $200k in overtime last year – two times her regular salary.  A CIO for the state’s pension system collected over $400k in bonuses, bringing his earnings to $945k!  No wonder our deficit keeps growing – taxpayers should be outraged about these kinds of abuses!

Jim Boren, the Fresno Bee’s Opinion Editor, laid out how these overtime abuses can take place on his blog a few weeks ago .  Here’s what he got from an insider with knowledge of overtime abuses in state prison’s:

"One guy racked up some obscene number of sick days. . . something like 100 days in a year and there is nothing management can do about it. It is state law and abusers are protected by civil service or contracts."

Then there’s this San Jose Mercury News piece about the Governor taking aim at state workers paid holidays.  California’s state workers, unlike almost all of the other states and the private sector, get an incredible 14 paid holidays off each year.  The Governor is pushing to eliminate two of those holidays and the unions are crying foul.  The most telling part of the article is the quote from a state worker who is upset with the Governor:

Theresa Reina has worked for the state for 18 years and makes no apologies for the paid holidays she enjoys. Every time the budget hits rough waters, she said, state leaders turn to employees because they’re an easy target.

 "The public always cries about the benefits we get," she said, "but that’s the perk of working for state government."

 The public always cries about the benefits you get because it’s the public’s tax dollars that pay for your perks! The fact that the Democrats in the Legislature aren’t willing to make these fixes to state government during this budget crisis makes it all too obvious how we got into this mess in the first place.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.