Free Republic

Taxpayers potentially owe almost $610 million to local government employees in Nevada’s two most populous counties for their unused paid time off, financial reports show. That liability grew 26 percent from 2007 to 2017, and it doesn’t represent compensation that will be paid exclusively for rest, relaxation, illness or personal time. Many of Nevada’s public employees can stockpile their sick and vacation hours and cash them out at retirement. Some of those payouts exceed $100,000.

Educators in ActionWorker Rights June 27, 2018 • 10:23AM Supreme Court Ruling in ‘Janus’ Deals Blow to Working Families By John Rosales The collective voice of American workers was undermined today by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in ​Janus v. American Federation of County, State Municipal Employees. In a 5-to-4 decision, which casts aside decades of precedents and laws, the court has eliminated a public-sector union’s ability to collect “fair share” or “agency” fees from workers who choose not to join as union members but are still protected by union agreements. The ruling undermines the ability of educators to come...

Nick Saban isn't just Alabama's highest-paid public employee. A new ranking shows he's the highest-paid public employee - by far - in the country. GoBankingRates.com's ranking looked at the top-earning public employee in each state. In most cases, the person bringing home the biggest paycheck is a coach for a public university. The rankings are based on 2017 figures and there have been some changes since it was calculated. For example, California's highest-paid employee, Jim Mora, earned $3.57 million a year before he was let go last year after the Bruins lost their third consecutive game to rival USC.$11.1 million...

Teachers carried signs and marched during a rally at the state Capitol in Oklahoma City on Monday calling for higher wages. Last week, the legislature in Oklahoma City voted to give teachers an average raise of $6,000 per year, or roughly 16 percent, depending on experience. Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, signed the package into law, but teachers said it was not enough. They have asked for a $10,000 raise as well as additional funding for schools and raises for support staff like bus drivers and custodians.

Public employees in California may have their pension benefits slashed due to the rollback of a longstanding rule in the state, Gov. Jerry Brown revealed in a recent budget briefing. The California governor revealed that he has a “hunch” legal proceedings could pave the way for cuts to public employees’ benefits. “There is more flexibility than there is currently assumed by those who discuss the California rule,” Brown said during the briefing.

One of the most obnoxious trends in the nation, and one that is particularly acute in California, is the continued push to enshrine public employees as a special, privileged caste of Americans, exempt from the rules and obligations that apply to the rest of us. As I documented in my 2009 book, Plunder!, public employees often now receive the kind of pay, benefits, and protections more fitting for France, where civil service is the highest calling. In the United States, we traditionally valued entrepreneurship and freedom above pencil-pushing and bureaucracy. But times have changed. In California, a raft of public-employee...

It’s long past time for the Nevada Supreme Court to send a clear message to the folks running the state public pension system. Last week, attorneys for the Public Employee Retirement System announced they will appeal a District Court ruling that brushed aside the agency’s effort to withhold information from the taxpayers who support the pension fund. It’s just the latest gambit in the system’s six-year effort to delay, impede and obfuscate when it comes to lawful court orders. On at least four occasions, agency arguments that retiree pension payouts should be confidential have failed in court. Yet rather than...

The former head of Boulder City’s animal shelter was sentenced Tuesday to 90 days in jail for needlessly euthanizing her own dog. Mary Jo Frazier pleaded guilty in October to a felony charge of animal cruelty after admitting she killed her dachshund. She previously denied allegations that she euthanized animals for fun at the shelter.

Scott Walker, the political phenomenon who rose to national fame by taking on unions in one of the most blue-collar states, announced Monday that he’ll seek the Republican nomination for president, using his kick-off rally to throw red meat to his conservative supporters. “Americans want to vote for something and for someone,” Walker told the roaring crowd in Waukesha, Wisconsin. “So tonight, let me tell you what I’m for. I’m for reform, growth, safety. I’m for transferring power from Washington into the hands of hard working tax payers in all states across the country, that’s real reform.”…“I realize unlike some...

The head of the Nevada AFL-CIO proclaimed Tuesday that “working families are under attack” by Republican lawmakers who want to weaken collective bargaining laws and pensions now that they control the Legislature.Danny Thompson, executive-secretary treasurer of the organization, told supporters at the Teamsters Local 14 union hall that the designated GOP Assembly speaker, John Hambrick, R-Las Vegas, had sent a letter to local governments soliciting ideas for changes in public employee collective bargaining — the workers’ right to negotiate pay and benefits.Thompson, a former assemblyman, said he’s been watching the Legislature for some 35 years and he had never seen...

CARSON CITY — A retirement system official said Thursday a report showing that some public employees who retire collect more in pension benefits than they did while working was based on less than 2 percent of beneficiaries. The analysis also does not reflect changes to the retirement plan made in 1985 that reduced pension payouts, said Tina Leiss, executive officer of the system. The conclusions in the report issued by the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a conservative think tank based in Las Vegas, do not account for the vast majority of the members and retirees of the Public Employees’ Retirement...

CARSON CITY — Most people who make the decision to retire have to figure out how to live on fewer dollars, but that is not always the case with Nevada state and local government employees, a new analysis has found. The analysis by the conservative think tank Nevada Policy Research Institute, using newly available public data provided by the Public Employees Retirement System, shows that many public sector retirees actually receive a raise upon retirement. The analysis, which looked at 10 of Nevada’s largest government agencies, including the state of Nevada, Las Vegas, Clark County and the Clark County School...

When Steven Jones is sitting in prison (and I’m pretty sure the despicable abuse of his judicial powers will persuade a federal judge he’s unworthy of probation), don’t feel too sorry for him. He probably won’t have money woes when he gets out. While he’s pumping iron behind bars, he can rest assured he might be able to get up to 75 percent of his $200,000 a year salary as a judicial pension, at least at some point. That’s the way the system works. A pension is an earned benefit, so you can be a teacher convicted of molesting children...

Metra union members in line for 20 percent pay hikes over 6 years By Richard Wronski, Chicago Tribune reporter 6:03 p.m. CDT, November 2, 2013 Members of one of Metra's biggest labor unions could get raises worth more than 20 percent over the next six years and a $3,000 "signing bonus", according to a proposed contract negotiated between the commuter rail agency and the union. The proposed pact, awaiting approval from about 337 clerical workers and ticket agents belonging to the Transportation Communications Union, was announced last week and comes as Metra continues to negotiate with 12 other unions, including...

With state and local governments struggling to balance budgets in a still sluggish economy, government employment has fallen by 562,000 jobs since September 2008, a decline of 2.6%. In response, the Obama administration has called for more federal aid—on top of the $250 billion doled out in the 2009 Recovery Act—to help keep state and local government payrolls near prerecession levels. But supporters of more federal aid implicitly assume that the size of the public sector was optimal before the recession. On the contrary, overstaffing is a serious problem in government, and the best evidence is a simple empirical fact:...

Under pressure to match a bonus the Pinellas sheriff plans to award his staff, the County Commission is leaning toward offering its employees a similar deal. At the board's Thursday meeting, a majority of the commissioners said they would support a $1,200 one-time bonus for employees next fiscal year, as well as three additional days off. This payment would come at the same time that the board plans to raise property taxes to help absorb a $25 million budget gap. Careful to describe the money as a one-time payment rather than a raise, commissioners said that Sheriff Bob Gualtieri's surprise...

A picket line could soon become the newest attraction at San Francisco's two fine arts museums if a contract dispute between some museum employees and management continues. Workers in the union that represents about 90 employees of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor Museum in Lincoln Park completed voting last week to authorize their two-person bargaining team to call a strike if talks fail. "We do not want to go on strike, but we will be forced to if management refuses to work with us," said Larry Bradshaw, vice president of...

Carson City judge James Russell told the Nevada Public Employees Retirement System to release the names of all retired employees including their benefits by January 4, 2012. The Reno Gazette-Journal sued to get the information several years ago. The following will be public: names, salary, retirement dates and benefit amounts.

A Los Angeles city fire captain is on leave after for allegedly falsifying his timecard after auditors found he was paid $50,000 in vacation time last year, according to a report Wednesday. Capt. Eric Vasquez was paid nearly $77,000 above his base salary of $108,000 — the equivalent of nearly 23 weeks of pay — in vacation, overtime and bonus pay, according to payroll information obtained by the Daily News under the California Public Records Act. The alleged falsification by Vasquez, a 17-year LAFD veteran whose duties involved supervising time sheet data entry — including his own — were discovered...

Ten years after the Sept. 11 attacks, ex-city worker Natarajan Venkataram says he’s sorry he stole millions of dollars meant for identifying the remains of trade center victims. He’s just not sorry enough to turn over $400,000 sitting in his bank account in India. The city has recovered $7 million of the $10 million he and an accomplice stole, but he went to court to hold onto this final portion of his ill-gotten gains. In a phone interview from the federal prison camp at Fort Dix, N.J., Venkataram, 46, whined about jail conditions and apologized repeatedly for his crime. Asked...