Posted on 07/16/2010 2:47:25 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette today denied Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's request to immediately compel State Controller John Chiang to pay state employees minimum wage.
The denial means there will be a hearing on the issues on July 26, with a full hearing sometime in August, but Marlette's ruling is a boost for about 200,000 state workers, who were facing paychecks for $7.25 an hour for the July pay period. Chiang has said he would issue full pay unless the legal process went against him before July 22, the cutoff to send payroll to the check printer.
Today's hearing extended a stop-and-start legal battle between Chiang and Schwarzenegger stretching back to the state's last budget impasse in 2008.
Then, as now, Schwarzenegger invoked a 2003 state Supreme Court ruling to order state workers' pay withheld to the least allowed under federal law when the state fails to appropriate money for payroll by the July 1 start of a fiscal year. Once a budget is in place -- which could take weeks or months -- the employees receive their withheld pay.
Chiang refused to comply with the order 2008 order. He contended that the state's computers couldn't handle the job and that the state would risk running afoul of federal labor law if it recklessly did want the governor instructed.
Schwarzenegger sued and won in Sacramento Superior Court last year, but by then the 2008-09 budget was in place with money designated for payroll. State workers had escaped minimum wage.
Chiang appealed the decision and lost again this month in Sacramento's 3rd District Court of Appeal. But the court declined to rule on the so-called "infeasability" argument that Chiang had made, the notion that the state's system of payroll processing isn't up to the task.
Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/the_state_worker/#ixzz0tss7DC7Q
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.sacbee.com ...
Good.....now California can slip on off in the Pacific in the figurative financial earthquake slide that it deserves.
The only way out of this for all of the states and the Fed is to SLASH spending and start laying off with DEEP cuts in non-education area jobs.
Legal (and Bureaucratic) paralysis is what will bring this country down —
No matter how dire the problem, there will always be a judge (or bureaucrat) stupid and/or venal enough to put a stop to any attempt at a solution....
AT some point, somebody is going to have to go Andrew Jackson (”he made the ruling - let him enforce it”), or we’re gonna all join hands and swirl around the bowl....
...dang.
Just dang.
I would have thought that nothing would bring the reality of California’s trouble to its state employees in a personal way like opening up that paycheck and seeing minimum wage.
Can’t pay ‘em, FIRE them!!
” Can’t pay ‘em, FIRE them!! “
Isn’t there already and injunction - or series of injunctions - against that??
Judges can be legislators without the constraints of anything so mundane as a budget, or the law, or reality. If the courts insist on micro managing everything, there should be some accountability.
What a farce...They would eventually get paid in full...so all the Gov is doing is causing more bookwork and scr***** with people who pay their taxes.
YOU HAVE TO CUT GOVERNMENT SPENDING.
Some executive is going to have to stand up to these judges who think they are the senior partner is government. They aren’t. Their policy ideas are no more authoritative than the executive’s.
All Schwarzenegger does is whine about it like a girly man.
This doesn't even cover the unfunded liabilities of the future we are committed to (now): SS, SSI, EITC, AFDC, EBTs, societal incorporation of illegals, healthcare, Wall Street regulation, CAP and TRADE, and so forth.
As Butch probably said to Sundance at the end as they charged out, "We're f@cked."
I thought some judge said he couldn’t lay people off.
The executives will cut their losses and move to more reasonable grounds. Insurance has already done this in Kally. Look for more industry staples to beat to the hills too.
Jim Rob in da house!
A poll this week shows Schwarzengger at about 20% approval. That is a record low shared with Gray Davis. Almost everybody here in California hates him, but they hate him for different reasons. Conservatives don’t like him because he is a turn coat. The man is delusional about “green” jobs, embryonic stem cell jobs, and wasting billions on a bullet train. He even endorsed Obamacare. His wife picked his chief of staff. He does whatever Maria tells him to do.
Just wondering what if banks decided not to honor those payroll checks .... like they’d be holding nothing if the state decides it didn’t have enough money to honor them ....
Ignore the damn court and do it anyway. They really don’t count.
Sorry,,, teachers/administrators are sucking on the teat also,,, pay moms to stay home and teach kids,, schools are doing a BAD job of it anyway!
My pet peeve it all the money spent on computers in schools today.
Did you have computers in school? I did not and learned Reading, writing and arithmetic better by the 5 grade than most high school drop outs today!
Chiang refused to comply with the order 2008 order...
Schwarzenegger sued and won in Sacramento Superior Court last year
And yet - even though it's established CASE LAW at the Superior and Supreme Court level - this judge decides that Schwarzenegger cannot cut the wages. Laws have no meaning other than what the current political masters decide they have!
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