The State Worker

California Assembly lawmakers this morning put a hold on legislation that would have prohibited salaried state employees from taking a secondary hourly-wage position within their same department or agency.

The Appropriations Committee didn't officially vote to kill Assembly Bill 208, but holding the measure in committee essentially kills it.

Assembly Budget Vice Chairman Jeff Gorell, R-Camarillo, introduced the legislation after reports in The Bee shed light on the obscure policy. Gorell blasted the practice, saying that it had become a means for salaried state workers to receive de facto overtime.

"I continue to ask my colleagues to make the responsibility of government oversight a top priority," Gorell said in a statement released this afternoon. "Week after week we are seeing new examples of executive branch mismanagement, and this is just one more example of a government culture out of control and irreverent to oversight."

Democratic majority leaders, including Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, expressed concern about the policy and Gov. Jerry Brown has since banned intra-departmental "additional appointments" for salaried state employees. His edict carries the force of administrative policy, not law.

Last week Brown's Department of Human Resources released an audit that concluded departments inappropriately appointed salaried managers to secondary-wage jobs. A separate audit by the State Personnel Board said that departments violated state civil service laws by doling out additional appointments without a competitive, fair application process.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Gorell, R-Camarillo, joins Assembly members in applause after they were sworn in during the first day of session at the State Capitol in Sacramento on Monday, Dec. 3, 2012. Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee

Ah, memories.

Posts about the bitter labor fight between the University of California and AFSCME dredge up the kind of user comments we used to see during the pitched union battles that were common during Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration.

A sampling of the "unions-good/unions-bad" debate with criticisms of this blog mixed in:

A California Senate budget subcommittee delivered a setback to a planned upgrade for the state's job website today by rejecting a proposal to fund it.

The California Department of Human Resources figures it will take about $10 million over four years to make the jobs.ca.gov portal more user-friendly. It would absorb a little more than 80 percent of that cost, but Brown's 2013-14 budget proposal includes $821,000 in supplemental funding. (Click here for a recent State Worker column about the project.)

The three-member Budget Subcommittee No. 5 gave the funding a thumbs down this morning. Chairwoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, noted that an earlier estimate of the project figured it would cost half as much and that the state's high-tech history is pockmarked with failure.

Our column in today's fiber/cyber Bee looks at the how budget decisions regarding the failed MyCalPays project highlight the inherent tensions of governing.

In the case of the twice-failed state payroll program, officials face two related questions: Should the state commission an audit that would help other government mega-projects avoid the same errors? Or should it hold off on a detailed inward-looking forensic review -- a delay that would severely affect a review's findings and value -- to avoid undercutting potential litigation between the state and the MyCalPays contractor?

The Brown administration's May revision of the governor's proposed 2013-14 budget adds $14.6 million for cleaning up the wreckage from the failed system, but nothing for an independent review.

So where will that money go? Here's a breakdown provided by Controller John Chiang's spokesman Jacob Roper:

The Assembly has passed a bill that gives state employees more due-process protections if they are prematurely terminated for being off work without permission.

SEIU Local 1000 sponsored the measure by Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, D-San Bernardino, which would allow an adjudicating law judge to consider whether a department properly fired an employee who for being AWOL.

Currently the law assumes AWOL firings are righteous. An adjudicating law judge can reinstate employees who satisfactorily explain their absence, why they failed to obtain leave and also can prove readiness, willingness and ability to return to work.

But a judge can't consider whether departments fire employees before they cross the AWOL threshold for dismissal: five consecutive days away from work. Brown's bill requires a department to reinstate employees who are fired prematurely. If they don't, employees could then make that argument for reinstatement and a judge would have the leeway to consider it.

AB 855 also says that employees can demonstrate fitness to resume duty with documented verification from a doctor or other licensed health care provider.

IMAGE CREDIT: PhotoObjects.net / Getty Images

Wis. Legislature approves smoker surcharge, other measures for public employees
The Legislature's budget committee Tuesday approved a measure meant to discourage public employees from collecting a pension and a paycheck at the same time.- Fond du Lac Reporter

Thousands strike at University of California hospitals
As non-emergency surgeries were postponed and fill-in medical technicians were brought in from out of state, thousands of employees walked off the job Tuesday at the UC Davis Medical Center and four other University of California hospitals.- Sacramento Bee

State lawmakers' pay cleared for hike
SACRAMENTO -- Earlier this year, the commission that decides whether state politicians get raises put off a decision, waiting to hear from the state finance department whether the fiscal picture is bright enough to allow for increases.- U-T San Diego

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A new report from the Legislative Analyst's Office says the state needs to assess its role in the MyCalPays debacle.

That conclusion is part of the LAO's take on the $14.6 million Gov. Jerry Brown's budget gives the State Controller's Office to clean up the failed payroll overhaul.

The budget doesn't include funding for an audit of why the project failed. The analyst suggests that an outside firm should assess the state's role in the project's demise.

Controller John Chiang's spokesman, Jacob Roper, said that the money for an internal forensic analysis wasn't included in Brown's budget.

The timing for such an audit "is still being developed right now," Roper said.

PHOTO CREDIT: State Controller John Chiang. Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee 2011 file

The final tally is in: Government employees at 20 state and local departments and four Sacramento-area businesses collected 1,916 pieces of clothing during last month's Denim Drive.

Many of the donated items go directly to victims of violent crime and abuse, while others will be sold in thrift stores that fund assistance services, including WEAVE, Yolo Co Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Center., and La Casa de las Madres in San Francisco.

The annual drive is inspired by Denim Day, an observance that started 12 years ago to protest an Italian court's decision overturning a rape conviction because the victim was wearing jeans.

Here's the roster of this year's Denim Drive government- and private-sector sponsors:

As we reported late last Friday and Saturday, the Brown Administration and the State Personnel Board released their audits of California state managers and supervisors who had a second (and in some cases, a third and a fourth) appointment to hourly-wage jobs in their same departments.

About 85 percent, CalHR said, held secondary positions in violation of state hiring policies and civil service laws that aim to make state jobs subject to a fair and open process.

The remaining 76 of the appointments were appropriate, CalHR investigators said.

What follows is the unedited spreadsheet from CalHR that summarizes its auditors' findings:

Some of California's most prominent departments improperly gave salaried managers additional jobs that pay an hourly wage, violating civil service rules, according to a audit released late this afternoon.

The state's prison and hospital systems, CalPERS and the Department of Social Services together accounted for nearly all the 504 salaried managers and supervisors who held a second hourly-pay position in 2012. Human resources auditors in the Gov. Jerry Brown's administration said 428 employees, or 85 percent, shouldn't have received secondary job titles because the hourly work fell within the scope of their salaried job duties.

Brown's human resources department and the State Personnel Board investigated 11 agencies whose managers also held hourly part-time jobs last year. The audits launched after The Bee first reported on the policy in January. Brown subsequently banned additional appointments for state managers and supervisors.

The state human resources department dedicated 10 staffers to research and write their reports over the course of three months. Still, their findings lack some basic information, such as how much the departments spent overall on managerial additional appointments last year. CalHR spokeswoman Pat McConahay couldn't come up with that figure when asked this afternoon.