California: Teacher retirement bill hits GOP slowdown

The Sacramento Bee ^ | April 25, 2003 | Jim Sanders

[concentric circles]

Legislation that would offer California teachers immediate "golden handshakes" to help ease the prospect of layoffs got snared Thursday in interparty political bickering.

The measure, AB 1207, would give public school systems and community college districts two options to entice teachers who are near retirement age to leave this summer.

[concentric circles]

If I were in the assembly and wanted what I felt was and important bill to pass I think I would talk to my fellows in the assembly to line up the votes. The majority party feels like it can bully it's way through this session.

[kritikos]

"The majority party feels like it can bully it's way through this session."

Hopefully, some day I can say, "What goes around...comes around."

[concentric circles]

These excerpts appeared in the LA Times story:

..."There was no shouting; in fact, at times the chamber grew tensely silent. Yet beneath the measured discussion was an undertone of bitterness. "It's getting ugly," Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) said after the debate. "People are getting testy."...

..."When the time came to vote, Republicans refused to cast votes either way. When no Republicans hit either their red or green vote buttons, the normally raucous Assembly turned quiet. When the vote on the bill stuck at 44 to 0, one member made a sound like a balloon releasing air."...

..."The bill had been one of many being held in abeyance by the Assembly Appropriations Committee until a state budget was crafted. But Thursday, in a meeting that lasted no more than two minutes, the committee revived Corbett's bill and moved it to the Assembly floor.

"Republicans objected to singling out Corbett's bill. Assemblywoman Lynn Daucher (R-Brea), whose daughter is one of the teachers who recently got pink slips, said the Appropriations Committee should be reviving all bills that could help school districts retain teachers, including those that would give schools flexibility in how they meet class-size requirements."...

[NormsRevenge]

Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, accused the GOP of playing politics with teachers' careers and livelihood.

That's a good one! LOL

[Tacis]

Here is a guarantee, a slam dunk! This bill will pass. Teachers will get a golden handshake and retire early, a major win for the powerful teachers' unions.' But then, and here's the guarantee, the unions will argue that the loss in some districts of all that collective experience is hurting the children, especially the minority children, and there will be pressure to allow districts to employ, in seniority order, retired teachers. They will get, maybe, one and a half times the final rate and there will be new law to allow the consultants service to be factored in to their pension credits so that, in five years, there will be retired teachers earning pensions of more thatn 125% of their final salaries. California socialism/banditry strikes again.

[Mister Baredog]

"I just think it's a sad, sad commentary," Goldberg said.

This fat uber-liberal uglo-lesbian hippo is really "deeply saddened". I'm shocked!

[jnarcus]

Teachers in my daughter's school are now "working to contract"...no office hours, no time for asking questions or getting extra help...It seems to me that those in the CTA campaigned long and hard to achieve the current administration. They are getting exactly what they voted for. Unfortunately, it is truly the children who suffer.

[NormsRevenge]

Hey Now!!, It's only other people's money!

Our troops deserve golden parachutes, not every state employee and bureaucrat.

[George W. Bush]

When no Republicans hit either their red or green vote buttons, the normally raucous Assembly turned quiet.

Any conservative serving on any governing body with a majority of liberals knows exactly what those "sounds of silence" sound like! Heh-heh.