The State Worker

The powerful union representing 30,000 correctional peace officers statewide has joined the  battle to torpedo Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's furlough and 10 percent pay cut plan.

Three San Francisco lawyers for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association have filed their own case against the state, the governor and the Department of Personnel Administration in Sacramento County Superior Court.

Lawyers Gregg Adam, Jonathan Yank and Jennifer Stoughton say in court documents filed earlier this week that the furlough and pay cut moves are illegal, unconstitutional and must be stopped by the court.

The union says its members pay cannot be cut without prior approval of the legislature and that has not occurred.

The union's complaint likely will be steered to the desk of Judge Patrick Marlette.

Marlette is already hearing similar cases filed by the state engineers and scientists and the Service Employees International Union, Local 1000, later this month.

Read the California Correctional Peace Officers' Association legal complaint here.

The allegation made by the Service Employees International Union, Local 1000, was tantalizing, to say the least, even if it was nowhere in its own court filings.

Had Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger deliberately flouted his own Dec. 19 executive order by hiring expensive private sector lawyers to defend lawsuits that state worker unions launched to kill his administration's furlough and pay cut plan?

An SEIU representative suggested that the hiring of David Tyra and two peers from the pricey Sacramento law firm of Kronick, Moskovitz Tiedemann & Girard did exactly that.

The hire, the union alleged, breached this section of the Governator's executive order:

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that effective January 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010, all State agencies and departments under my direct executive authority, regardless of funding source, are prohibited from entering into any new personal services or consulting contracts to perform work as a result of the furloughs, layoffs or other position reduction measures implemented as a result of this Order. 

The unions filed lawsuits on Dec. 22 and thought they had the administration cold;  who can hire a top gun like Tyra between Christmas and New Year's when the state is closed.

Wrong, totally wrong, says Lynelle Jolley of the Department of Personnel Administration.

The state contract with Kronick, Moskovitz was signed Nov. 1, 2008, she said. 

Because there was much talk during the fall about the bad budget, union contracts and compensation issues, the department's legal unit anticipated some legal nastiness.

The unit put the contract in place in advance in case it needed extra firepower, Jolley said.

Everyone is hoping they'll never actually be needed.

But in case state Controller John Chiang really does run out of cash and the state is forced to issue IOUs - it calls them  "registered warrants" -  to pay state workers and vendors, his office has created a special working group to get ready.

Chiang warned of a looming state cash shortage in December, telling state departments to prepare for the worst.  He's doing exactly that himself.

The controller has joined several financial industry groups representing credit unions and major and independent banks. Together, they're working to identify and work out any issues or problems that might be anticipated with floating IOUs  before they start circulating, Chiang spokesman Jacob Roper told The State Worker.

"That includes a very serious look at security measures," Roper added.

Beth Mills, a spokeswoman for the California Bankers Association, told The State Worker individual banks haven't decided yet whether they will accept the state IOU's or not.

Mills said the working group met privately with Chiang's staff last week and the bankers had many questions that required "technical clarifications."

"It's not as easy as the state issuing a warrant and a person takes it into a bank and cashing it," Mills said. "We need to know more about how many warrants we're talking about, the volume, and how much money is involved."

Mills said CBA is hoping for answers this week.  Roper said conversations are ongoing.
 

The State Personnel Board has a handy-dandy Web tool for anyone looking for a state job anywhere in California.

It's called Geo Search, and you can see it right here.

The site displays open jobs by county statewide. I was curious: is the state hiring in these tough times?

I thought there would be no vacancies and no hiring, given that the state is running out of cash and eyeballing a stinker of a $45 billion budget deficit.

 So wrong.

In Sacramento County, there are 1,600 state jobs open, many of the advertisements for them including a declaration that the position is exempt from the state hiring freeze. 

Yes, that was 1-6-0-0.

Ditto for Los Angeles (181 open jobs), Fresno (83 open jobs), Napa (78 open jobs) Solano (62 open jobs), Yolo (49 open jobs) and San Francisco ( 44 open jobs).

Sutter, Yuba, Placer and Eldorado counties show postings for another 22 vacant jobs.

How can this be?.

Lynelle Jolley, a spokeswoman for the Department of Personnel Administration, thinks that some of those jobs probably won't be filled.

Some agencies are loathe to take down their job advertisements because they want to build a file of resumes they can tap when the economy and state's finances improve, she said.

Like any other workplace, though, there are defections to other agencies and state worker departures to private sector or other jobs. 

 There are retirements, too, though the 401K declines that some state workers saw in their accounts during 2008 have put a lot of those plans on hold, Jolley added.
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"Even during furloughs and layoffs, there are certain jobs that you have to fill," Jolley said. "Consider what you would do if six people in your ten-person shop either leave or retire?"

The Governor and Department of Finance have made it clear in their marching orders that departments and agencies may still hire, Jolley said, but noted there's a big caveat.

The departments and agencies must meet budget reduction targets and promise not to come back later to plead for more money because they've blown the budget. 

If you have a teenager or college-age student, you may know where this is going. . .

Sometimes, the efforts of a few stand out as a shining example in hard times.

Workers at the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, a department with about 310 state employees, have collectively answered the call of depleted food banks statewide even as their own pay checks are set to shrink 10 percent next month.

DAPD workers have so far donated more than 8,000 pounds of food and cash to the State Employees Food Drive.

That's more than 25 pounds per employee, compared to last year's statewide average of about 3 pounds per worker, the department's Morgan Staines told The State Worker.

Staines, the department's chief counsel and food drive leader, said many DADP staffers have personally experienced hard times over the years and understand needs are great.

"We're all closer to the edge right now than we would like," Staines said.

The state employee food drive continues through Jan. 16.

The Department of Food and Agriculture, despite its own incredible workload, coordinates the statewide effort in partnership with California Emergency Foodlink.  The Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs leads the state's drug prevention, treatment and recovery efforts. 

The Association of California State Supervisors wants the Legislature to launch impeachment proceedings against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"We want to go on record as supporting immediate impeachment of the governor," association President Olin King said in a news release after its board backed the move at a weekend meeting.

"His inability to pass a budget is placing California in financial jeopardy, and his order to furlough state workers, to place the burden of balancing the budget on our backs, is an act of malfeasance," King added.

The association represents state managers, supervisors, and exempt and confidential employees.

The furlough on the first and third Fridays of every month will cut state worker pay by nearly 10 percent. They may also lose two paid holidays under Schwarzenegger's plan to shave the budget deficit.

King said the painful pay cuts come as some state workers already begin to see lower paychecks this month after their benefit deductions increased.

The group said the governor was "mean-spirited" and "arbitrary" in cutting employees' salaries, given their responsibilities and the services they provide.

On Wednesday, ACSS members will join all state workers at rallies across the state to protest the stalled budget talks. The Sacramento rally starts at 11 a.m. at the south side of the Capitol.

Read the association's own blog on this issue here.

An employee of the Department of Insurance who opened a package on Capitol Mall this morning came into contact with an unknown substance and became sick.

The unidentified woman was taken to a local hospital by her supervisor, Sacramento City Fire Department spokesman Mike Doucette said.

The room where she opened the package was closed and the surrounding area was evacuated.

Sacramento Fire Hazardous Materials personnel subsequently entered the room and removed the package for testing.

Tests failed to identify a toxic or hazardous substance, Doucette said, but two California Highway Patrol Officers who touched the package were also taken to hospital as a precaution.

If it skates like a Duck and hits like an Angel, should taxpayers pay for it?

Apparently not, according to the scorching audit of $2 million in questionable spending by the state avocado commission that surfaced late last week.

One of the more intriguing nuggets uncovered by California Department of Food and Agriculture auditors is a whopping $123,227 the commission spent on season's tickets for the Anaheim Ducks NHL hockey games and Los Angeles Angeles baseball games between 2005 and 2008.  

That tidy sum didn't include food or beverages, either. No word on how much that cost.

Auditors found the bills for tickets - and in the Ducks' case, playoff tickets - were tucked away in a commission ledger called "merchandising, retail performance programs."

The way it was recorded on commission books "was not clearly transparent," auditors reported, adding it was unclear if the commission's oversight board knew about the tickets.

When auditors looked at who was using the tickets and if it was for business, they found internal logs showing 40 percent of Duck tickets went to the commission's own employees and 15 percent of Angels tickets also went to employees.

Another 21 percent of Angels tickets reportedly went unused.

The logs said nothing about what avocado industry business was discussed at hockey and baseball games - or who it was discussed with.

Employees who enjoyed the tickets did not reimburse the commission for them, the auditors added, concluding the expenses "were not in the best interests of the state."

Auditors have recommended that unidentified state employees who used any tickets be required to repay the money if they were used solely for personal purposes.

The Ducks were a hot and hard to get ticket in Southland in 2006-2007, when the team won hockey's Stanley Cup Championship and it made the playoffs again last year.

Former commission president Mark Affleck, who resigned in 2008, is a big ice hockey fan who still plays competitively, according to his biography on his church's web site. 

The audit has been turned over to Attorney General Jerry Brown's Office for further investigation of "possible financial improprieties."

The commission says it's adopted new spending controls to stop such abuses in the future.

Have a look at the audit here.

The Oregon-based Service Employees International Union, Local 503, is vowing its membership will resist Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski's two-year budget plan.

Kulongoski's proposed budget calls for his state workers to take eight furlough days --one each quarter -- as part of the state's two-year budget.

The unpaid days off represent a 1.5 percent pay cut for Oregon's state workers.

Kulongoski's budget includes no extra money for cost-of-living wage increases, either.

The SEIU is the largest state worker union in Oregon. Its president there, Linda Burgin told The Salem Statesman Journal: "We will resist all efforts for the state to balance its budget on our backs. We don't think furloughs are the way to solve our problem."

Not all state workers up North oppose his plan.

The state's second largest union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, is not opposing the furloughs, The Oregonian reports, noting that Ken Allen, Oregon boss of the AFSCME, prefers furloughs to additional layoffs.

Read up on the Oregon situation here and here.

Another California constitutional officer, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, has joined the state attorney general and treasurer in refusing to adopt state worker furloughs next month.

In a terse statement his office just released, Garamendi stated: "We have already cut the Lieutenant Governor's budget by 10 percent this year and we will cut another 10 percent this year. We are public servants for the people of California so we will not be furloughing our staff."

Garamendi's operation has a staff of 20 and -- believe it or not -- three offices (in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento), spokeswoman Beth Willon said.