Free Republic

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill Wednesday that includes a provision added in the waning days of the legislative session allowing his administration to nearly double the pay of 50 top state bosses. Under Assembly Bill 2936, the workers -- mostly heads of agencies and departments -- could get as much as 125 percent of the governor's salary, although the governor says he intends to extend the raise to only one or two officials. Schwarzenegger doesn't take his pay. But in 2007, the salary assigned to his office is scheduled to increase to $206,500. That would mean the top administrators...

Sacramento -- On the day before Roderick Hickman quit his job as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's corrections czar, he bumped into the lead lobbyist for the state's prison guards union, who was walking out of a meeting with Schwarzenegger's chief of staff [Susan Kennedy]. Hickman became incensed, and the next day he fired off an angry e-mail to Cabinet Secretary Fred Aguiar announcing his resignation and suggesting the governor's office had lost the political will to make big changes in the state's dysfunctional prison system. Hickman, several sources close to him say, was concerned that the union was beginning to have...