Posted on 07/02/2010 12:23:06 PM PDT by SmithL
The 3rd District Court of Appeal has upheld a two-year-old ruling allowing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to reduce state workers to minimum wage in the absence of a budget.
The court, agreeing with a Sacramento Superior Court ruling, said State Controller John Chiang overstepped his authority by refusing to issue minimum-wage paychecks to state workers during the 2008 budget impasse.
The decision, published just moments ago, comes the day after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Department of Personnel Administration gave Chiang the same pay reduction instructions the controller rejected two years ago.
Chiang's office has not said whether it will appeal to the state Supreme Court. If the ruling stands and no appeal is filed, Chiang will be hard pressed to refuse to follow Schwarzenegger's minimum wage ruling this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
...uh oh, fan hitting time ...
This is going to be interesting. In all seriousness, it will hurt quite a few people. Are they paying all state workers this amount?
It’s all extremely trivial. It used to be that no one got paid when there was no budget, but when teh budget was signed everyone received every dime in back pay they missed. Most banks honored vouchers from the state and issued short term payroll loans. It’s annoying but no one starves or barely even suffers.
Then a judge stepped in and said no, you have to pay the state employees because there is a Federal minimum wage. So to retain more operating cash during the stalemate, instead of issuing full paychecks Arnold’s people issued paychecks equivalent to what minimum wage would have been. But again, when the budget was finally settled, everyone got every dime they were owed in back pay.
So last year to make things difficult the Democrat Controller said he wouldn’t issue minimum wage checks, only checks for full salary due the employees. Therefore Arnold’s only solution would have been to authorize the full paychecks during the stalemate, or risk violating a Federal court order.
Ultimately its mostly trivial because a budget eventually results and everyone is fully paid under each of the scenarios. Moreover there really is no difference between Arnold and the Democrats, so its really an exercise in legal theory and nothing more.
Of course he’ll appeal to the supreme court. It’s what these people do.
see #4
My wife was having a conversation with a FLAMING liberal about this just last night. I only heard my wife’s side cause was on the phone. She told me what happened when she hung up, laughing her head off. Went something like this:
Liberal: The Terminator (yea she said that) wants government workers in California to only make minimum wage.
Wife: Good! California can’t afford what they paying some of their workers.
Liberal: It’s not that bad!
Wife: Have you SEEN how broke California is?
Liberal: They can’t make minimum wage, people need to eat! 20 million babies will die! YOU JUST WANT BABIES TO DIE!
I kid you not that was the conversation.
After my wife hung up she finally composed herself and said “how do they even make those connections?!”
IMHO, 91.75% of all civil service personnel, at federal, state and local levels, are minimum wage employees. Again, IMHO, CS equals welfare with a desk.
And, yes, I have several years working around Civil Service people.
Chiang will appeal, and the State Supreme Court is likely to issue a stay. However, the NEXT Governor will have this as a lever on the unions.
IMHO, 91.75% of all civil service personnel, at federal, state and local levels, are minimum wage employees. Again, IMHO, CS equals welfare with a desk.
And, yes, I have several years working around Civil Service people.
Liberals love the minimum wage so much, live by it!
The party of abortion cares if babies die?
No - attorneys and doctors will be paid nothing. Seriously.
Here is what tax payers can look forward to if California State employees are paid minimum wage until a budget is signed.
The Controller will have to hire more staff and pay them overtime to convert all computer-stored and executed pay warrants from the existing pay scale to minimum wage.
State employees will get loans to hold them over the 2 or 3 months it takes to pass a budget.
When the budget is signed, the Controller again will have to expend a nice chunk of time and money converting everything back to the negotiated pay scale for every classification in the state.
Then the controller will have to calculate and cut checks for the back pay for every classification, with 5% interest for the 2 or 3 months.
So the way this works is...
State employees get loans to hold them over 3 months, after which they are made whole, with interest.
In the meantime, the Controller has to waste a boatload of money changing over from current pay scale to minimum wage and back again, PLUS cut make up checks.
This is nice little waste of taxpayer money that accomplishes precisely nothing. Anybody who is for it after reading my explanation, is either for more government waste, or thinks that the state employees will be hurt in some way by getting 3-month loans from their local banks, and paying it all off after getting their backpay checks.
What a waste of time and money. Oh well, that’s government for you.
Here is the real deal. Arnold is hoping to get the state workers so mad that they scream at their legislators to come to the table and pass a budget. That is all this is about. And to that futile end, he is going to waste a nice chunk of taxpayer money making the Controller staff up and pay OT to convert the computer programs from current scale to minimum wage and pack and then cut a bunch of back pay checks.
Pure idiocy.
Cliffs notes:
State workers will get loans to cover their minimum wage pay, later getting back pay with interest. They will come out ahead by 5% interest.
The Controller will waste a bunch of money converting the computer program to minimum wage, waste a bunch of money converting it back, and waste a bunch of money cutting the checks for back pay.
Arnold is doing this to pressure the CA Legislature to pass a budget.
This will accomplish nothing, not hurt the state workers, but will waste money.
Exactly, the state’s payroll system was designed more than 60 years ago. The Legislature approved $130 million in 2005 to revamp it but it never got done. Now, years later the state has had fewer experts on hand who could thoroughly understand the programming languages used to design the system. All in all, the whole thing would take them almost 6-9 months to do but as you say, what’s the point?
CA voters need to wake up. You cannot ‘punish’ politicians AFTER they are in office, the ONLY way to punish them is to never vote them into office again.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.