A new survey finds that "the picture is brightening" for the state and local government civil service workforce as fewer employers resort to hiring freezes and layoffs -- although they're continuing to whittle away at employee benefits costs.

About one-third of state and local governments told the non-profit Center for State & Local Government Excellence that they're freezing pay this year. That's down from 51 percent in 2012.

Just 18 percent of government employers said they're laying off workers, compared to 28 percent that axed jobs last year.

Governments have continued making changes to health and retirement benefits, with 56 percent modifying health benefits in 2013 and 44 percent altering retirement programs. The change most often cited in both areas: shifting cost from the employer to the employee through higher contributions.

Meanwhile, 22 percent of employers surveyed said their retirement-eligible employees accelerated their retirement plans this year, the same as 2012.

Here are the survey results in detail. Click here to view the 2012 report for comparison.

The program may be dead, but the spending isn't over for the state's defunct payroll system overhaul.

Gov. Jerry Brown's budget includes a $14.5 million allocation for legal costs and computer data clean up associated with the MyCalPays system that Controller John Chiang killed earlier this year.

Brown's January budget proposal called for $38 million and 150 positions to finish implementing the program, but Chiang canceled the contract with tech giant SAP after a series of error-filled test runs raised concerns that the project could never expand statewide.

Chiang spokesman Jacob Roper didn't have a detailed breakdown of how the controller will spend the reduced allocation.

The governor's budget revision says part of the money will pay for 40 temporary positions to move employee payroll accounts that were part of the failed test runs back to the old computer system, fix errors and make employees whole.

Some of the money will pay for legal costs. Chiang has said he will sue SAP, which has said it fulfilled the contract's terms.

In total, the controller's office has spent $262 million over nine years on the project. Lawmakers first approved funding for a state payroll overhaul in 1998.

PHOTO CREDIT: State paychecks roll off a printer at the State Controller's Office on C Street in Sacramento. Randall Benton / Sacramento Bee 2003 file

We've received quite a few calls and emails from CalPERS long-term care policyholders asking for more details about this week's Assembly committee hearing on the system's program and the long-term care insurance industry in general.

We thought former Assemblyman Dave Elder's comments had the most news value. The rest of the hearing retraced details that we have reported plenty in the last six months or so.

In response to policyholders' intense interest in this topic and their questions about Tuesday's hearing, we've embedded the proceeding's archived video feed above, courtesy of the California Channel. Set aside some time if you plan to watch the whole thing. It's nearly four hours long.

A former assemblyman suggested Tuesday afternoon that the Legislature should consider reining in CalPERS' control of its struggling long-term care insurance program if the system follows through with plans to hike premiums for some policies by 85 percent.

CalPERS' decision to get tougher on dependent eligibility checks for medical insurance presents a ticklish public relations challenge for an agency that has long prided its customer service-oriented reputation.

If the system's amnesty message is too feeble, it will be ignored. Come on too strong, and CalPERS risks backlash from offended employees and retirees.

In response to an embarrassing six-week queue of business filings, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a measure today that immediately sends $1.6 million to the California secretary of state's office to relieve the backlog.

Lawmakers acted after a March 6 report in The Sacramento Bee revealed that more than 120,000 forms, many with filing fees attached, were stacked up in the agency's Sacramento headquarters.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen blamed the delay on the cyclical nature of the filings, budget cuts imposed by the Legislature and a paper-based system in desperate need of automation.

Some form-processing delays hamper business startups. Other states, such as New York, Texas and Nevada, use web-based technology to turn around similar filings in a week or less.

The measure Brown signed, Assembly Bill 113, gives Bowen money from the current budget to pay for overtime and to hire temporary workers between now and June 30, the end of the current fiscal year. Legislative leaders have said they intend to appropriate more money over the next few years to get business filing wait times down to 10 days or less and then maintain that benchmark until a new automated system comes online in 2016.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gov. Jerry Brown. Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee file, 2012

The California Public Employees' Retirement System today is mailing some 60,000 official notices to long-term care insurance policyholders that a rate hike is coming.

The letter explains that CalPERS is raising premiums 5 percent this year on the plan's costliest policies, which offer lifetime coverage and daily benefit payouts that keep up with inflation.

Policyholders can avoid the premium increases by moving into plans that offer up to 10 years of benefits without automatically inflation-adjusted coverage. The deadline to opt into another plan varies by policyholder.

CalPERS' letter also flags a 5 percent increase planned for 2014 and another 85 percent jump in 2015 spread over two years. All the rate hikes apply to policies offering inflation-protected, lifetime coverage for things like nursing home services and in-home care.

The state Assembly has sent a bill to Gov. Jerry Brown that would give $1.6 million from the current year's budget to Secretary of State Debra Bowen's office.

With an investigation into salaried state workers also earning hourly wages nearing a conclusion, Gov. Jerry Brown's administration has officially banned "additional appointments" for California state managers and supervisors.

"As members of the management team, employees in supervisory and managerial classes can reasonably be expected to perform work as needed to ensure that a department meets its mission," Julie Chapman, director of the California Department of Human Resources, says in the policy memo released late Thursday. "A manager should be expected to fulfill a wide range of duties not normally part of their assignment and classification without additional compensation."

The memo comes amid investigations by the Brown administration and the State Personnel Board into whether departments abused additional appointments. The state started looking into the policy after The Sacramento Bee reported that 571 managers and supervisors in nearly a dozen departments also held other hourly-pay jobs in their same departments.

Brown issued a broad order that halted the practice pending the investigation, which the departments intend to conclude next month. The new memo sets a permanent policy.

Chapman's memo also reminds departments they can pay managers an "arduous pay" differential for working extreme hours. Arduous pay ranges from $300 to $1,200 per month. Departments decide when an employees qualify and how much they receive.

And the memo suggests several other established policy options to additional appointments as a way to meet heavy workloads and crushing deadlines -- using non-managers, including mandatory overtime, shifting employees between similar job classifications and limited-duration job and training assignments.

California Department of Human Resources Additional Appointments Memo

PHOTO CREDIT: The building at 1515 S St. in Sacramento, which houses the California Department of Human Resources. Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee file, 2009

A bill that would immediately give the secretary of state $1.6 million to work down a six-week backlog of business filings held by the state cleared the California Senate this morning on a 25-10 vote.

Assembly Bill 113 takes money from this year's budget to pay for overtime and temporary employees through the end of the 2012-13 fiscal year. They'll work on processing business forms, many with filing-fee checks attached.

Lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled Legislature reduced the secretary of state's funding over the last few years. Still, they took a keen interest in the business form backlog problem and locked arms with business interests to push the bill after The Bee reported on the delays last month.

Republicans voted against the measure this morning, asserting that lawmakers can't legally tinker with this year's budget law and that AB 113 rewards government inefficiency by throwing more money at a mismanaged agency.

Legislative leaders have said they intend to follow up with an additional $6 million to $8 million appropriations in 2013-14 and 2014-15 fiscal years specifically to get the backlog down to between five and 10 days by the end of November, then keep it there until the state brings an automated filing system online in 2016.

The bill needs to clear one more vote of the Assembly before it heads to Gov. Jerry Brown's desk.

PHOTO: The California State Capitol. Rob Ferris / Sacramento Bee 1996 file

Look for several hundred state employee union members on the Capitol's south side at noon today to show support for a measure that would put limits on government job outsourcing.

Assembly Bill 906 would limit state personal services contracts to two years with an option for a two-year extension.

It's a few steps down from an earlier version of the measure by Assemblyman Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, that limited contracts to 90 days with a one-time option to extend the arrangement another 90 days after notifying the State Personnel Board.

SEIU Local 1000 has made a priority of curtailing outsourced personal services contracts. Pan's office is expecting a few hundred of the local's activists to attend a Pan news conference about his bill at lunch time on the Capitol's south steps.

In a press release issued Tuesday, Pan's office cites a statistic from Local 1000 research: "In 2011, the state had 11,714 active personal service contracts with private vendors worth $11.7 billion."

Local 1000 did not respond to calls, texts and emails seeking comment.

PHOTO CREDIT: Assemblyman Richard Pan. Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee 2010 file

Our story in Sunday's Bee looked at how California's state government appoints retired annuitants to high-level, high-paying "career executive assignment" positions with virtually no oversight.

One aspect that the report doesn't address is how departments use "blanket funds" to pay for the 75 executive positions we reviewed. Paying CEAs with "blanket" money, at the very least, runs counter to the spirit of state policies intended to scrutinize and limit those high-level leadership and policy-making classifications.

"If you retire as a CEA and one of your friends wants to bring you back," said Norma Suave, a retired state human resources and labor relations officer, told The State Worker, "paying them under the blanket is a way of bringing you back in and paying you CEA pay."

Blanket funds are essentially a department's petty cash drawer for personnel expenses. "Under the blanket" pay goes to here-today-gone tomorrow employees such as expert witnesses for court cases, temp help and retired annuitants. Blanket funds commonly cover the cost of a full-time employee who transfers, fails probation and exercises their return rights after their old position has been filled.

An Assembly bill channeling extra money to Secretary of State Debra Bowen's office to work down a backlog of business filings will be heard this morning by a key Senate committee that will likely pass the measure, but with less money.

The Senate Budget and Finance Committee analysis of Assembly Bill 113 notes the measure has been amended to reduce the appropriation from the $2 million approved by the Assembly to $1.6 million.

In a spending plan sent to the Senate, Bowen said she really needs only $1.6 million in the short term to begin working down the backlog, which averages about six weeks.

A bill aimed at relieving a six-week backlog of business filings at California Secretary of State Debra Bowen's office gained some procedural speed today after it looked like it might bog down in the Senate.

Assembly Bill 113 would immediately give $2 million to Bowen's office to pay for extra help and infrastructure to work down the backlog. It flew through the lower chamber last month in just five days.

But after being sent to the Senate, the measure was held up while Bowen sent over a spending plan, a condition that Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg placed on moving the legislation along.

Earlier this week, the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, chaired by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, set a hearing date for April 29.

As The State Worker noted Wednesday, that made it highly unlikely Bowen would have the money by May 1, which her spending plan assumes.

This afternoon, Steinberg spokesman Rhys Williams emailed an update:

"Staff has set the committee to hear the bill on April 18th at the request of the Pro Tem and Senator Leno."

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State Senate to move 'quickly' on business filing-backlog bill

CalPERS staff will recommend next week that the fund's board oppose a measure that would make its retiree-address data available to outside groups for non-political mailings.

A scathing analysis prepared for next week's board meeting concludes that Assembly Bill 785 is contrary to the board's current policy on mailing information to annuitants, diminishes the board's authority and "creates legal, financial and information security risks for the System."

The measure, authored by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, requires CalPERS to give mailing information to third party direct-mail vendors at the request of groups that represent CalPERS' retiree members. The groups would then use the vendors to mail materials to the retirees. Once the mailers went out, the mailing lists would be destroyed.

A (highly unscientific) poll on this blog shows that 94 percent of those who responded think the bill is a bad idea.

Weber says AB 785 merely aims to educate retirees and that it has built-in cost and security requirements that would repay CalPERS for the cost of servicing the member groups and protect members' personal information.

The analysis counters that about $205,000 in annual administrative costs wouldn't be recouped and that mishandled information would expose the fund to risk of litigation.

Worth noting: AFSCME, which is sponsoring the measure, "previously requested CalPERS to provide names and addresses for a direct mailing under conditions similar to those proposed in this bill and CalPERS did not approve the organization's request," according to the analysis.

RELATED:
The State Worker: Union pushes bill to get CalPERS' mailing list
Poll: Should state open CalPERS' mailing list to interest groups?

130415 Calpers Item 5c by jon_ortiz

After the Assembly took just five days to push through a bill allocating $2 million to Secretary of State Debra Bowen's office to work down a mountain of business filings, the Senate is taking a more measured approach to the legislation. Its first committee hearing date is set for April 29.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said last month that the Senate would move quickly on the bill, which would fund overtime and temporary student hires to open thousands of envelops stacked up in the Secretary of State's office, most with checks attached to file important business documents.

The Senate asked for a detailed spending plan from Bowen, who sent this to the Senate nearly two weeks ago. It assumes that that lawmakers will make the funds available on May 1.

It's not clear whether the May Day start is realistic, since the Senate committee won't hear the measure in committee until the end of this month. We've emailed Steinberg's office to ask.

Asked for comment about the Senate's comparatively slow action on the measure, Pérez spokesman Steve Maviglio said the lower house moved quickly on the bill "because every day we don't act, we're losing jobs." The speaker hopes the Senate will move quickly on the bill, Maviglio said.

PHOTO CREDIT: Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg. Paul Kitagaki Jr. / Sacramento Bee 2012 file

The Bay Area attorney who waited six weeks for the state to process his business registration form filed the paperwork again on Tuesday after the Secretary of State's office rejected his first application.

The Bee reported on David Lerman's story as part of its investigation into the average 43-day wait time for Secretary of State Debra Bowen's office to handle business filings. After the story ran, the Assembly pushed through legislation that gives Bowen more money to work down the backlog.

The measure is now in the Senate, which insisted on seeing a spending plan for the extra $2 million the bill gives the agency on May 1. (Click here to see the plan.)

Information technology giant Cisco Systems Inc., global manufacturer 3M Co. ... and the California Department of Motor Vehicles?

That's right. The state's most-public department is among some of the heaviest hitters in government and private industry to receive a 2013 Computerworld Honors Laureate for Innovation.

The technology publication honored DMV's 3-year-old social media program, which includes active Facebook and Twitter accounts. DMV was the first state agency to develop its own YouTube channel to distribute driver training and humorous informational videos such as the DMV Answerman. The clips have drawn 26 million hits so far.

DMV spokeswoman Jan Mendoza said that the department is in tune with technology trends and is constantly brainstorming how to exploit new information tools to reach the public.

"We have to keep up," Mendoza said. "Our customers demand to be served."

Founded in 1988 by Computerworld's corporate parent, International Data Group, the Computerworld Honors Program is governed by a not-for-profit foundation that honors organizations and individuals for using information technology to promote positive social, economic and educational change.

DMV is among 268 laureates in 11 award categories this year. One winner in each category will be recognized with a 21st Century Achievement Award at a June banquet in Washington, D.C.

Bee columnist Dan Walters digs into this week's Stockton bankruptcy decision and concludes the transcript of the judge's comments on his ruling "imply that the city and CalPERS may not prevail on the pension issue when he weighs the city's plan to deal with its debts."

Click here to read Dan's column.

Read the court transcript for yourself and see if you agree. Judge Christopher Klein discusses CalPERS and the city's bankruptcy plan starting at PDF page 45 (page 588 of the transcript). To jump to that part of the document, just put "45" in the page field at the bottom of the embedded document viewer. Mobile users can click the link to open the transcript.

Transcript 4-01-2013 Judge Klein Ruling in City of Stockton BK case

Stateline's Melissa Maynard reports on a proposed pilot program in Oregon "that would fund treadmill desks for some state workers and study the effects on health and productivity. Treadmill desks range in cost from $400 to $5,000, but the hope is that the state could recoup its expenses through lowered health care costs over the long run."

Treadmill desks are popping up in the private sector, Maynard says, but the upfront costs create a hurdle for governments.

Oregon Republican state Rep. Jim Thompson, who sponsored the bill, says the benefits from a healthier state workforce outweigh the costs.

Read Maynard's story and then take our poll:

A group that lobbies for government openness has given California an "F" for spending transparency.

The California Public Interest Research Group and its national counterpart, USPIRG, hammer the Golden State in a report on states' use of web technology to open their books for public scrutiny.

The report issued last week assigns point totals and letter grades to all 50 states' transparency websites based on content and user friendliness.

The Golden State ranked 49th, with just 37 points out of a possible 100 points. North Dakota placed 50th, with 31 points.

As we reported in this post, the California State Athletic Commission is struggling financially after a long history of management miscues and other lapses. The problems are so long-lasting and severe that State Auditor Elaine Howle says lawmakers should consider winding it down and transferring its duties to the Department of Consumer Affairs.

Click here to read the auditor's report. This link will download a 2011 background paper prepared for the Senate Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development. The committee meets again on April 8 for another review.

We can never get everything we learn into a news story. "From the notebook" posts give you some of the extra details, notes and quotes behind the news.

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Gabi Campanario / Seattle Times 2007

Following Thursday's State Worker column that the state's emergency management agency spent more to mail a collection letter to a former employee than the amount she owed, the agency is changing its certified mail policy immediately.

Kelly Huston, Cal EMA's assistant secretary of media relations, said spending $6.51 to certify a letter to Deena Mount for a $5 debt was "ridiculous."

From now on, the agency won't send certified letters for collections under $100, he said.

Mount, a Cal EMA employee until 2010 who now works for the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, received notice last week that she owed the money for a 2007 travel-expense overpayment.

It's not clear why the agency took six years to catch up with the debt. Agency officials on Wednesday couldn't find any records of prior correspondence to Mount about the matter.

"There's a reasonable way to handle these things," Huston said. "The way we did it in her case was not reasonable."

IMAGE CREDIT: www.calema.ca.gov

The commission that regulates boxing, mixed martial arts and similar sporting events has been so badly managed for so long that it's time to think about axing it, a new audit released this morning says.

The State Athletic Commission has mismanaged its finances, failed to document facility and equipment safety inspections, mishandled revenue collections from promoters and bungled boxers' pension payments. according to State Auditor Elaine Howle.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said his chamber will "act quickly" on a bill aimed at easing the backlog of business filings at the Secretary of State's office.

Steinberg commented on the measure, Assembly Bill 113, following this morning's Senate session.

While the Senate will likely expedite the bill, Steinberg said that the upper chamber wants more information. The measure would give $2 million to Secretary of State Debra Bowenfrom the current fiscal year's budget to pay overtime and hire temporary employees to work down a mountain of business filings that average six weeks to process.

"We want to see a plan from the secretary first," Steinberg said.

Bowen has blamed the delays on a number of factors, from budget cuts to the state's paper-only filing system. In some instances the wait times delay when businesses can launch, hire employees and pay taxes.

RELATED:
California Assembly votes $2 million to reduce business filing backlog
New California businesses face six-week state filing wait

PHOTO CREDIT: Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg speaks to lawmakers in 2012. Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee

A sampling of the business reports by the California court system's administrative body reveals some flaws in how local courts assigned contracts last year and reporting gaps in goods or services purchases, according to a report released this morning.

State Auditor Elaine Howle found that the Administrative Office of the Courts' financial report to the Legislature for the first half of 2012 contained "several instances where data in (the report) was inaccurate,"

The AOC is the business arm of the Judicial Counsel, which sets policy for the California's network of 58 county courts. By law, it gives lawmakers a financial report twice each year.

The Assembly today voted to send $2 million ASAP to Secretary of State Debra Bowen's office for extra help to work down a six-week backlog of business filings.

Assuming the Senate and Gov. Jerry Brown also approve the measure, Bowen will use the money to pay staff overtime and hire temp help to jump on the mountain of mail immediately.

Lawmakers also are weighing a recommendation that they allocate an extra $6 million to $9 million in fiscal 2013-14 for Bowen to hire another 68 employees.

The Assembly will vote today on a measure that would give $2 million to Secretary of State Debra Bowen to quickly work down a backlog of business filings literally stacked up at her offices.

The money would pay for staff overtime and temporary help to handle the 122,000 or so documents -- most with filing-fee checks attached -- that are in a processing queue that averages six weeks. Other states take far less time, but they exploit online automation. California's system still uses paper and index cards.

After The Bee reported the delays, Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez said his chamber would move quickly to release more money for Bowen to hire and pay overtime and has encouraged the Senate to move just as expeditiously once the measure moves there.

Pérez also wants lawmakers to give Bowen an extra $8.9 million in 2013-14 to hire business filing staff with the goal of reducing the backlog to 5 business days by November. The secretary would then maintain that standard until a new computer system comes online in 2016.

Correction, 3:30 p.m.: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated the number of business documents awaiting action by the secretary of state's office.

PHOTO CREDIT: John A. Pérez during an Assembly floor discussion in 2010. Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee

This week's Assembly budget subcommittee hearing into backlogged filings at Secretary of State Debra Bowen's office touched on whether the secretary has asked lawmakers for more money. Her office runs on fees it collects, but the money has to be allocated by the Legislature. Last year Bowen collected $75 million and lawmakers returned about $50 million. The balance going to the general fund.

Severe backlogs in fiscal 2011-12 prompted Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez to transfer $1.2 million from the lower chamber's budget to the secretary of state. He gave Bowen the money specifically to work down business filing backlogs that in some instances had reached 80 days or more. Filing wait times currently run about six weeks.

Here's Bowen's July 2012 letter to Pérez, accounting for how the department spent the money and predicting that her office would get filing delays below 32 calendar days. Bowen spokeswoman Shannan Velayas provided the letter to The State Worker.

We can never get everything we learn into a news story. "From the notebook" posts give you some of the extra details behind the news.

Assembly lawmakers intend to introduce legislation and dedicate millions of dollars to reduce what is now a six-week backlog of business filings stacked up at Secretary of State Debra Bowen's office.

The new standard would give the state five business days to process business filings.

The Assembly's Budget Subcommittee No. 4, heard details this afternoon about the delays this week, which Bowen's office attributes to a seasonal end-of-year run on services and budget cutbacks. The agency has shifted staff away from other jobs to focus on breaking the logjam of documents awaiting attention.

A legislative budget panel this afternoon will delve into the six-week backlog of work at the secretary of state's office, which was first reported by The Bee last week.

The Assembly's Budget Subcommittee No. 4, which focuses on state administration, put the issue at the top of its agenda for today's 1:30 p.m. hearing at the Capitol. You can listen to an audio feed of the hearing by clicking here.

A new bill would require the Legislature approve state contracts for services, limit how long the agreements could run and clamp down on how long departments could extend them.

Sacramento Democrat Richard Pan's proposal, Assembly Bill 906, tacks those provisions on to existing laws intended to protect state civil service jobs.

Officials from California's Department of Human Resources and the State Personnel Board told lawmakers today that they are analyzing how departments applied an obscure, controversial policy that allows salaried state employees to take a second part-time job in their same department and earn an hourly wage.

In testimony before a Senate Budget and Fiscal Review subcommittee, human resources Director Julie Chapman said her department has dedicated five employees to work through 25 boxes of employee time sheets, payroll records and other information. Eleven departments turned over the documents after The Bee reported that they had at least one exempt employee appointed to a second job that pays an hourly wage.

"We hope in the next month to have all the analysis done," Chapman said.

A policy that allows salaried state workers to take second positions within their departments is on a legislative committee's agenda this morning.

The Senate Budget and Fiscal Review subcommittee chaired by Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, will hear from the California Department of Human Resources about "additional appointments" for exempt employees.

Many state workers hold more than one job; Brown administration puts a brake on the practice

A staff report in advance of today's scheduled 9:30 a.m. hearing says there's no uniform standard for the practice and that it "appears in many ways to be an 'underground' human resources policy. ... The lack of a clear, updated policy is effectively a non-policy, and creates an atmosphere ripe for abuse and misunderstanding."

Scroll down to page 11 of the embedded document for more of the committee's staff analysis.

Senate Budget and Fiscal Review agenda by

After nine years and $262 million spent on a twice-failed project to upgrade California's employee pay system, the Legislative Analyst's Office says an overhaul of the current system may not be possible.

A report released today lays out the ugly details of the 21st Century / MyCalPays project: The 2004 launch with an optimistic $130 million price tag, the escalating cost estimates that reached $373 million; the contractors hired and fired when the job wasn't done.

Last month State Controller John Chiang terminated a contract with global tech firm SAP after a test run of 1,300 paychecks was riddled with errors. For now, the state continues to process payroll with the 30-year-old system it had hoped to discard.

"Due to recent events, it is unclear to our office that integrating the state's payroll systems, in their current structure, is feasible," the analyst's office wrote.

Retiree medical costs rise to $64 billion over 30 years

Storified by Jon Ortiz· Tue, Feb 26 2013 07:10:42

Our state worker columns about government IT prompted more than the usual number of angry emails and phone calls the last couple weeks. The first column zeroed in on Controller John Chiang's decision to ax the MyCalPays payroll system. The second considered a broader question: Why is tech such a huge problem for the state?

Here are the most common criticisms and our responses:

A top administration official has weighed in on a federal fight over the public pension law Gov. Jerry Brown signed last year law and whether it puts at risk billions of federal grant dollars.

In a letter last week, Brown's Labor Secretary Marty Morgenstern told the U.S. Department of Labor that the new pension law doesn't diminish mass-transit workers' collective bargaining rights, a prerequisite of the federal money.

"My legal staff and I have reviewed this matter carefully," Morgenstern wrote, concluding the law "merely modifies" the public pension plans that state and local government employers can offer.

The Public Employee Pension Reform Act caps benefits, hikes employee contributions and offers less generous formulas for employees hired Jan. 1 and later. Unions representing roughly 20,000 mass-transit workers in California contend the benefit terms that must be negotiated, not imposed.

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, most of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Today's column takes a look at government culture and a few ways that it clashes with information technology. The piece quotes John Thomas Flynn, who was California's first chief information officer in the Pete Wilson administration.

A registered Republican, Flynn ran last year for the Assembly District 8 seat. He finished fourth in a primary field of six candidates. Democrat Steve Cooley won the November general election.

Flynn follows state government tech like the Bee's Matt Barrows follows 49ers football. Flynn's blog, TechLeader.TV, regularly features IT types from various departments.

Today at 11:30 a.m, Flynn's scheduled guest is Chris Cruz, chief information officer for the California Department of Health Care Services. You can watch the webcast live by clicking here.

PHOTO: John Thomas Flynn / Sacramento Bee file, courtesy John Thomas Flynn

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer plans to ask the CalPERS' board today to purge the fund's investments in two companies that make firearms that are illegal in California.

If the board agrees to Lockyer's motion, the nation's biggest public employees' retirement system would divest of a total $5 million invested in Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger.

Last month Lockyer made a similar proposal to the California teachers' retirement system, the second-largest U.S. public pension fund after reports that the fund had a stake in the manufacturer of the rifle used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

Here's the text of Lockyer's motion to the CalPERS board:

We can never get everything we learn into a news story. "From the notebook" posts give you some of the extra details behind the news.

Our story in today's Bee examines union lawsuits against a handful of pension fund boards in the so-called "1937 Act Counties" that aren't in the CalPERS system. It's difficult to draw any sweeping conclusions from the lawsuits because the details of each vary and the 20 counties with their own pension boards have different rules when counting pensionable income.

Labor unions aren't sitting still for trimming what types of compensation go into the pension calculations for members who were in the system before the Public Employees' Pension Reform Act kicked in on Jan. 1 (specifically Assembly Bill 197, which defines pension reform rules for employees in the funds before the law took effect.)

This week California Attorney General Kamala Harris, at the direction of Gov. Jerry Brown, filed this Notice of Intent to Intervene in litigation against Alameda County's pension system, and she'll likely file similar papers soon in Contra Costa, Marin and Merced county courts, spokeswoman Lynda Gledhill said, where unions sued those counties' pension boards for how they've interpreted the pension law.

To get a taste of the unions' arguments, check out this complaint against the Merced County Employees' Retirement Association:

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, most of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Our column today takes a look at Controller John Chiang's decision to ax a $250 million payroll system upgrade program. We wondered what it says about the MyCalPays project and California's 30-year trail of information technology failures, a path paved with hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

So we asked Chiang spokesman Jacob Roper what lessons have been learned from the payroll system saga, a project inherited from former Controller Steve Westly. Here's Roper's emailed response and more info about a new state IT task force commissioned by the controller and Gov. Jerry Brown:

The California Department of Human Resources has announced three dates for unions to deliver their initial labor contract proposals and to allow public comment on them.

The so-called "sunshine meetings" are required by state law, but often offer little insight into contract negotiations. Union leaders and the administration often informally work out the broad parameters of a deal. Bargaining teams then hammer out the fine details at the table.

Contracts for 19 of the state's 21 bargaining units expire on July 1, 2, or 3 this year. Unions representing state fire fighters and Highway Patrol officers extended their current pacts until 2017 and 2018, respectively.

If a union fails to reach an new agreement before its contract expires, the terms of the expired deal remain in force (with some notable exceptions) until a new contract is in place.

CalHR has set 1 p.m. on Feb. 28, Mar. 7 and Mar. 14 for the first round of presentations and will schedule additional meetings as needed.

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, most of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Our column in today's Bee about the state's struggle with big-picture data, included a reference to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's trouble with producing spending reports to the Legislature.

As we noted, Corrections produced the numbers on time this year. A shift in political winds helped.

A $4 million repair project will start soon on the state Board of Equalization headquarters in Sacramento, even as the agency continues its push to get out of its high-rise money pit.

BOE, which collects California business taxes, has spent $65 million so far on repairs to the 22-year-old building at 450 N St. The problems have ranged from leaking windows and burst water pipes to toxic mold and faulty elevators.

And that doesn't count pending repairs to the building's corroded wastewater pipes.

Today's report by The Bee's Matt Wieser asks an important question about state parks officials who hid $20.5 million in surplus funds:

Were any crimes committed, and if so, will anyone be held to answer?

As a supplement to Matt's reporting on parks, The State Worker is posting interview transcripts and other documents that trace the state attorney general's investigation of the matter. More than 2,000 pages of investigation documents have been made public by the California Natural Resources Agency.

Click here to see the first batch of interview transcripts. Here's the second:

The State Personnel Board has issued a formal apology for a 71-year-old resolution that essentially kicked 265 Japanese Americans out of state service and prevented countless others from taking state government work during World War II.

The apology, laid out in a resolution adopted last week, has no legal consequences. Many years ago the state rescinded its discriminatory resolutions and awarded back pay to 88 Japanese Americans who challenged their terminations. A 1983 state law awarded up to $5,000 to Japanese American employees who lost their state jobs.

But until last week the board had never said it was sorry for its part in the institutionalized discrimination.

"I applaud the State Personnel Board for its resolution," said David Unruhe, spokesman for the Japanese American Citizens League. "This apology was a long time coming, but it is a sincere apology nevertheless."

The California Department of Motor Vehicles is doing a U-turn.

After asserting otherwise this afternoon, officials at the high-profile agency now say they may have spoken too soon when they denied hiring any of their own employees for two jobs within the same department.

CalPERS suggested that DMV and three other departments may have used "additional appointments," a practice at the pension fund reported today by The Bee. DMV previously said it hasn't employed the double appointments, then it pulled back.

"Our previous statement may have been premature," DMV spokesman Armando E. Botello said in an email received by The Bee at 4 p.m.. "We are conducting a more thorough review of our records to determine whether the situation has occurred."

While state policy allows state workers paid an hourly wage to hold two state jobs at once, it's not clear whether CalPERS' decision to give salaried managers additional hourly jobs and pay is proper. The fund said it began the practice in 2011 to cope with crushing workloads created by the launch of a $514 million computer system.

Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez and Assemblyman Rob Bonta called news of CalPERS paying salaried employees additional hourly wages "disturbing" in a joint press statement released this afternoon and promised to look further into the practice.

UPDATE 5:28 p.m.: DMV says it spoke too soon about employees with two jobs

Although CalPERS thought otherwise, a Department of Motor Vehicles spokeswoman said today that DMV doesn't give its employees dual positions in the department to ease workloads.

During interviews and email exchanges with The Bee for today's report on CalPERS salaried managers earning extra money for hourly work, a fund spokesman said officials there believed that the practice is "relatively common" among state employers.

We can never get everything we learn into a news story. "From the notebook" posts give you some of the extra details behind the news.

Our news story in today's Bee looks at CalPERS' use of "additional appointments." The practice, which allows state workers to be placed in a second state job, is authorized by Section 350 of the state Personnel Management Policy and Procedures Manual.

But the 27-year-old document doesn't directly answer the question raised by CalPERS' application of it: Does a state agency or department have the authority to give salaried managers they employ a second rank-and-file position that pays an hourly wage?

Columnist, CalPERS lock horns over implementing pension law

Storified by Jon Ortiz· Mon, Jan 14 2013 08:42:39

This is the latest in a series counting down this year's most-viewed State Worker blog posts, with a little hindsight analysis.

With California's economy slow to rebound, the Brown administration held a series of secret meetings in the warming days of May to tell state employee union leaders that cuts in his 2012-13 budget revision would include about $800 million from compensation costs.

Brown was confronting converging issues: The state budget deficit had grown since his January budget draft, which didn't include the payroll cuts. He wanted to voters to approve a tax hike measure and the effort would be made tougher if state employees were spared from the same fiscal ax he was applying to social services and schools.

Some state workers thought Brown's whispers to the unions were treasonous. Isn't he a Democrat? Hasn't he said that former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's furloughs were a bad idea? And now he's leaning on furloughs???

But eventually, 19 of 21 bargaining units negotiated a monthly furlough day with the administration. Lawmakers imposed the unpaid time off on two bargaining units that held out.

Furloughs are scheduled to end June 30 of this year and, since voters approved Brown's tax measure, the 2013-14 budget is in better shape. (Brown says there's no deficit. Others disagree.) The governor's new budget plan avoids extending any state employee compensation cuts into the next fiscal year.

Here's the post that some state workers thought they'd never see: Jerry Brown tells unions to brace for California state worker pay cuts

Gov. Jerry Brown wants the federal court to end its control of California's prisons, arguing Tuesday that the state has solved problems with inmate health care and prison overcrowding that prompted the intervention.

Bee reporters Sam Stanton, David Siders and Denny Walsh teamed up on this story about Brown's position and the coming legal battle it will assuredly provoke. Dan Walters' column today weighs in with historical perspective on Brown's prison politics.

Here's the state's request to the federal courts, which lays out the administration's rationale for the state resuming full control of the penal system. The main points are distilled in the table of contents.

Motion to Vacate by jon_ortiz

An era ends today when CalPERS stops taking applications for additional retirement service credit purchases. Meanwhile, Jan. 1 state paychecks for workers paying into Social Security will reflect a new 2 percent tax increase on wages .

Starting tomorrow, CalPERS members can no longer buy up to five years of additional service time for purposes of pension calculations. Applications for airtime must be time-stamped by CalPERS' mail room by 5 p.m. today.

It's an expensive benefit, but a pretty good deal for those who can afford it, since the money is guaranteed by the fund to give the same return on investment that CalPERS assumed on its investments when the purchase was made.

For members who have applied for a cost estimate since Mar. 15, the guaranteed rate of return is 7.5 percent.

Few state workers will be hit by airtime's end, but most state workers who received their pay via direct deposit today have already noticed that their Social Security tax has gone from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent.

The increase anticipated the end on New Year's Day of a 2 percent payroll tax cut for Social Security. Even though the Jan. 1 paychecks are for the December pay period, IRS instructions say the rate change affects state paychecks issued on Jan. 1.

Here's the memo from State Controller John Chiang's office that explains the situation in more detail:

This morning's light freeway traffic and no-hassle parking were testament to how many people in Sacramento aren't working between Christmas and New Year's Day. The Legislature and their 1,100 or so staff are off. Sacramento State's fall semester ended. Many private businesses also close for the holidays.

But what about the region's biggest employer, the vast state bureaucracy? From Caltrans engineers to Franchise Tax Board accountants to Employment Development Department staff, Sacramento County is Workplace Central to about 61,000 of state workers, many of those jobs within walking distance of the Capitol.

Our sense from our drive in is that like everywhere else, many state employees take leave during the holidays. Is that what you're seeing? And is the week from Christmas through New Year's Day a reprieve or a hassle compared with the rest of the year?

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, much of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Today's column chips off a small piece of the tension that exists between public pension funds' obligation to transparency and their marriage with less-than-open Wall Street partners to achieve the shared mission of hitting their investment targets.

We contacted several sources as we reported the column. One was CalPERS, which sent us the following statement. Since we couldn't get it into the column, we wanted to give spokesman Joe DeAnda's comments an airing, along with more thoughts from a few other sources we interviewed on Wednesday:

From Bee Capitol Bureau colleague David Siders:

Gov. Jerry Brown has appointed a former Pennsylvania prison chief secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Brown's office announced this morning.

Click here for more information on Brown's appointee, Jeffrey Beard.

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, much of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Today's State Worker column takes a look at CalPERS decision this week to add 86 new positions, mostly in its investments and information technology divisions.

Here's the Board of Administration agenda item that piqued our interest in the issue:
CalPERS Finance and Administration Agenda Item 5a

Early next year, the state will officially name the junction of Interstate 5 and U.S. 50 in Sacramento to honor Caltrans employees killed in the line of duty,

Assembly Concurrent Resolution 100 lists the State Engineer Memorial Interchangeas one of 26 new highway designations that recall the distinguished service of groups and individuals who have passed away.

Ryan Endean, spokesman for Professional Engineers in Calfornia Government, expects an official naming ceremony in spring 2013.

Since 1924, some 178 California Department of Transportation employees have been killed on the job. The leading cause of death: errant drivers who strike road workers.

PHOTO: The Interstate 5 - State Route 50 interchange / courtesy Professional Engineers in California Government.

Sentencing for a former California state employee convicted of fraudulently applying for worker compensation benefits has been delayed until next month.

Lisa Trevino-Angelo was arrested in 2009 after claiming that chronic pain, anxiety and fatigue left her virtually homebound without the strength to hold her baby, drink from a coffee cup and unable to perform her duties as a personnel specialist for the DMV.

A CalPERS investigation gave a Sacramento Superior Court jury in October enough evidence to convict the 41-year-old Trevino-Angelo of submitting a false benefit claim and making false statements to support it. Each crime is punishable by up to one year in prison. Sentencing was scheduled for last week but is now rescheduled for Jan. 4.

RELATED POSTS
Former California DMV worker convicted of disability claim fraud
View Trevino-Angelo disability fraud documents

IMAGE: www.yolocourts.ca.gov

A California state-run website that tracks state and local government employee compensation relaunched this week with major upgrades that aim to make the data more accessible to the public.

The refurbished site, publicpay.ca.gov, includes maps, simple search engines and even allows users to build their own custom reports, compare pay rates and download raw numbers for their own research. The State Controller's Office, which maintains the site, says it includes the latest state and local compensation data available -- 2011 for state and higher education, 2010 for cities, counties and special districts.

It's the first time that the numbers include wages and benefit data for 69 of the state's 72 community college districts.

Unlike The Bee's state pay database, however, the SCO's data doesn't include the names of individual employees.

The site "does remain a work in progress, and my office will continue to improve and expand this public pay project," Controller John Chiang said in a news release marking the relaunch.

Click here to open publicpay.ca.gov. You can view a menu of video tutorials about how to use the site by clicking here.

IMAGE: The report-building page on the state controller's revamped government employee compensation website. / www.publicpay.ca.gov

California takes more time to process initial unemployment claims than 40 other states, according to a new state audit of the Employment Development Department, as high-tech and telephone problems continue to plague the system.

For the quarter ending June 30, 2012, the department made 78 percent of initial payments within 14 days. The federal government considers 87 percent of initial benefits issued within 14 days to be acceptable.

The audit notes that unemployment fell in California from 12.3 percent in June 2010 to 10.4 percent in August 2012 and that initial claims dropped from 296,000 to 209,000.

"Although the State's unemployment rate has declined since 2010, the department still faces challenges in meeting acceptable timeliness levels," State Auditor Elaine Howle said in the report.

A new report by the Legislative Analyst's Office concludes California taxpayers have overpaid for two infrastructure projects that granted private businesses more sway in the process, but that the state could save big bucks through so-called "public-private partnerships" if they were executed properly.

State officials looked at Caltrans' and local governments' Presidio Parkway project in San Francisco and the Long Beach Courthouse, which is overseen by the state Administrative Office of the Courts. Both projects are still under construction. Each carries a taxpayer price tag of nearly $500 million and are being built through a public-private partnership.

Also known as "P3s," public-private partnerships usually are single-contract infrastructure agreements between a government entity and a private partner, often a consortium of several businesses. The private partner designs, builds, finances, operates and maintains the road, bridge or building. More traditional approaches to large public projects split the work between government agencies and several private firms that bid separately.

The LAO estimates the Presidio project could have been up to $140 million cheaper with a more traditional approach. Officials decided on a P3 based on several inaccurate estimates, including how competitive bidding would drive down construction costs. The courthouse project could have been up to $160 million less with a non-P3 approach.

Public-private partnerships can work for the state, the LAO said, but it needs to develop expertise to estimate costs and benefits correctly, pick the right projects and then negotiate the deals: "Based on our review of existing research, we believe that P3 procurement -- if done correctly -- has merit and may be the best procurement option for some of the state's infrastructure projects."

Legislative Analyst report: "Maximizing State Benefits from Public-Private Partnerships"

This report from CBS2 in Los Angeles includes surveillance of Caltrans employees using department rental trucks for commuting and personal business during work hours, including one worker who made trips to buy liquor. Watch for a heated confrontation between Gov. Jerry Brown and CBS reporter David Goldstein.

Editor's note, 5:02 p.m.: Brown said that Goldstein confronted him after a funeral for former Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally. Read more about Brown's reaction to the CBS 2 story on Capitol Alert.

CalPERS' to consider big hike for long-term care insurance

Background and social media reaction to news about the big premium hike -- up to 75 percent -- the California Public Employees' Retirement System's Board of Administration has on its agenda next week.

Storified by Jon Ortiz · Sun, Oct 07 2012 11:02:55

California remains among the nation's cellar dwellers in its ratio of state and local government employees to residents, according to a new analysis by the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. Meanwhile, state workers here are, on average, the highest-paid.

The Golden State was fifth from the bottom in its number of full-time equivalent state and local government employees relative to population: 476 workers per 10,000 state residents. Nevada had the fewest (420 per 10,000) followed by Arizona (433), Mississippi (462) and Pennsylvania (465). Texas ranked No. 1 with 565 state and local government employees per 10,000 residents, 8 percent above the national average of 525.

Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared on The Daily Show Monday to promote his autobiography, "Total Recall." The three-part unedited interview with host Jon Stewart touched on California's fiscal woes, with Stewart framing the subject as a political problem created by an initiative process that has allowed voters to refuse to raise taxes and simultaneously demand more government services.

Schwarzenegger pivoted from that point to public pensions, a topic that became a focus of his administration. The California Legislature created a system that now carries "$400 billion" in unfunded pension obligations, the Republican movie star said, money spent "looking backward" to pay benefits for work done that could be used for investing in the future on things such as education and infrastructure.

Stewart, a Democrat who generally sides with organized labor, offered little resistance to Schwarzenegger's pension claims, although the two later sparred over tax policy and the economy.

We've embedded the Daily Show segments below. Scroll to the 5-minute, 50-second mark of the first one to catch the pension discussion. The second clip includes Schwarzenegger explaining why he didn't feel beholden to the Republican Party. He crosses swords with Stewart over tax policy in the third segment, which opens with Stewart asking, "I'm wondering why you aren't a Democrat."

More than half of likely California voters think recent changes to public pensions strike a good balance or go too far, according to a new poll by the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Times.

The poll mirrors a similar survey by the Field Poll and UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies released last week.

Person interviewed: Ted Novack
Job: senior parks and recreation specialist
Interviewed by: Corrine Murphy, Justice Department deputy attorney general, and Angela Nowicki, Superintendent II, State Parks Law Enforcement Emergency Services
Date of interview: Feb. 24, 2012
Notable quote: "The comment was that you should take advantage of this because I'm going to." - Novack recalling encouragement by Manuel Lopez, the deputy director at the center of parks covert leave buyback program, for managers in a meeting to cash out their leave. Novack didn't participate because, he told investigators, he didn't need the money and preferred to take the time off.

The California Natural Resources Agency recently released more than 1,000 pages of interviews, adverse action notices and reports that detail a covert employee leave buyback program at the Department of Parks and Recreation during the summer of 2011.

Natural resources issued the documents online in response to media requests after The Bee broke the story of the leave cash-out program, which spurred the revelation that parks squirreled away millions of dollars while also threatening to close facilities due to extreme budget pressure.

This post is the next in a series intended to make the documents readily accessible to the public.
Novack Interview 2012-2-24

California's Board of Equalization faces $3 million to $4 million in costs to replace faulty exterior glass panels on its 24-story headquarters and to make extensive repairs to faulty waste water drainage pipes inside it.

In an email to The State Worker, a board spokesman confirmed the new repairs and their cost, which were first reported by Cal Tax Reports.

Labor unions wasted no time bashing the pension reform unveiled by Gov. Jerry Brown this morning as a unilaterally-imposed political exercise that needlessly guts state and local public employees' retirement for hundreds of thousands of workers.

"This is far more than 'low hanging fruit,'" said Dave Low, chairman of union coalition Californians for Retirement Security in statement issued while Brown was still holding a pension press conference in Los Angeles just before noon. "This is the fruit, the branch, the tree trunk, and the roots."

What particularly rankles labor leaders, however, was that none of this was bargained.

The state Department of General Services announced today that it has axed 7,112 vehicles from the state inventory of passenger cars, trucks, vans, buses, heavy equipment, boats, trailers, planes and other vehicles over the last 19 months. The reductions comply with Gov. Jerry Brown's order last year to cut the state fleet.

The department said in a press release that it eliminated some 4,204 passenger cars and light-duty trucks, saving an estimated $12.6 million annually in operating and depreciation costs. The state also terminated take-home vehicle privileges for more than 3,200 employees, nearly half the number of all so-called "home storage use permits" issued in January 2011 when Brown ordered the cuts in fleet costs.

General Services, which acts as the state's business manager, said these departments saw the biggest vehicle reductions:

Corrections and Rehabilitation - 2,263
Caltrans - 1,322
Parks and Recreation - 586
Fish & Game - 494
Highway Patrol - 457
Developmental Services - 312
CAL FIRE - 240
General Services - 241
Water Resources - 218
Prison Industry Authority - 105

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, much of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

In reporting for today's column on the coming fight pitting pension law against bankruptcy law, we spent about 20 minutes on the phone with professor Douglas Baird at the University of Chicago's Law School, discussing what lies ahead for governments, bondholders and employees. Here are a few snippets of what Baird said:

On how municipal bankruptcies challenge a lender's ability to collect:
There are strong limits on what courts can do to affect day to day operations of a municipality in bankruptcy. When talking about municipalities, what does it mean if one of them refuses to pay?

If you lend me money and I don't pay you back.... You can go to the clerk of the court, seize my assets and get proceeds from the sale of those assets.

But if it's a municipality, what exactly to you do? Sure, you can sue and the court will say the municipality owes the money, but how are you going to get the money? Buildings, for example, don't belong to municipalities. They're considered public assets. They don't belong to the city. So your asset seizure options are limited.

On how bankruptcy law might open the door to altering pension contracts:
The question that hasn't been answered yet is to what extent can you change or modify those obligations through the magic of bankruptcy? Does bankruptcy law give you the power to change those? ...

Bankruptcy doesn't give you a pass to walk away from obligations. It's simply a device that allows everyone to have a come-to-Jesus meeting and recognize reality.

Let's say you have pension obligations of 100, and assets worth just 50. You've got to do something about that. ... As a general matter, if it's a pension obligation that's vested, it's extremely hard to touch. There's a difference between someone nearing retirement and someone ... who is just starting their career. ...

Let's not forget: If you make a promise to someone you're supposed to keep it. Bankruptcy law just allows you to ask, how can we make the best of a bad situation?

California Edition host Brad Pomerance recently opened his show with a 13-minute interview with state Sen. Mimi Walters discussing public employee pensions.

Walters is a member of the conference committee tasked with crafting pension legislation. State Senate and Assembly leaders have said they will come up with a bill before the current session closes at the end of this month.

Midway through the interview Pomerance asks, "Do you believe that we will see some form of pension reform in this legislative year?"

Walters: "I believe we will see a form of pension reform. Will it be comprehensive? No. Will it make major changes to the issues that we're facing wth pensions? No. I believe that this Legislature will do something to say, 'Hey we took care of a couple of the abuses and now let's hope this issue goes away.'"

Pomerance: "Is something better than nothing, or is nothing better? Because if you do something it won't address the real fundamental problem."

Walters: "My concern is if we just do a little something, it won't address the fundamental concerns that we're facing -- and the issue may very well go away."

A separate interview about voting rights and legislation starts at the 14-minute mark with Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles.

Manuel Thomas Lopez, the central figure behind the parks and recreation scandal, spoke with state investigators about the plan before abruptly leaving his post earlier this year.

Below, we've posted links to the department's Notice of Adverse Action against the former parks deputy director, and the October 2011 termination notice for his deputy director job. Lopez left that post for a lower-level position in the department and was about to be fired when he retired earlier this year.

We've embedded Lopez's April 3 interview below and the subsequent investigation report of Lopez and the leave cash-out program signed by Deputy Attorney General Corinne Lee Murphy.

If you haven't already, read California parks officials were looking to spend while shortchanging parks, documents show, for context and then check out the documents:

Lopez Notice of Adverse Action
Lopez Termination Letter

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, much of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Our State Worker column in today's Bee notes that Professional Engineeers in California Government filed a grievance triggered by furloughs started in July. The union claims that the Brown administration violated the PECG contract by suggesting a 2012-13 budget that funds only 95 percent of their members' wages.

The then-Department of Personnel Administration (now dubbed the Department of Human Resources), said that the June 4 grievance was "premature" because it was filed before the July 1 start of furloughs so that no union members had suffered a loss.

The administration also said that Brown was acting in his role as governor in presenting a budget plan, not as the state's employer. Therefore, the administration said, Brown didn't violate the union's contract.

PECG attorney Gerald James asked for arbitration to keep the association's options open, but hasn't pushed the matter any further, union spokesman Ryan Endean said Wednesday.

PECG Jun4, 2012, furlough grievance and related correspondence

Many states, including California, may have more legal wiggle room to alter retirement promises for current employees than commonly thought, according to a new survey of state and local pensions by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

Researchers Alicia H. Munnell and Laura Quinby conclude that "the protection accorded pension benefits is less embedded in state constitutions and more open to interpretation than commonly perceived." If state courts and legislatures narrow "the current definition of the employer-employee contract to establish that the contract is created when the employee performs the service," then it would become possible to reduce retirement benefits for current workers prospectively, the authors conclude.

Munnell and Quinby say only three states - Alaska, Illnois and New York - have constitutions that clearly protect public pensions for current workers both retrospectively and prospectively. Arizona's constitution protects pensions "past and maybe future," while those in Hawaii, Louisiana and Mississippi protect only benefits that have been accrued.

California and most states consider pensions legal contracts protected from any laws that impair them. When the contract is considered to take effect is key. Conventional wisdom says that pension contracts in California and other states take effect from the first day of employment.

Munnell said in a recent interview with Pensions & Investments that she expects more states will attempt to redefine their pension obligations once courts rule on recent laws that did so in Rhode Island and New Jersey.

For the vast majority of states, however, changing future benefits for current employees is extremely difficult ...

In the end, however, the ability to modify pensions in these states hinges on when the contract is deemed to exist. States where the contract is found to exist at the time a worker is hired have little freedom to change benefits. States where the contract is found to exist at retirement have considerably more flexibility.

Each state would have to define that for itself, the authors conclude, through both the courts and their legislatures.

Pensions & Investments reports that Munnell thinks more states will move to alter pension benefits for current workers if the courts uphold changes to current employees' pensions enacted in New Jersey and Rhode Island.
Legal Constraints on Changes in State and Local Pensions

The Association of California State Supervisors wants Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg to reverse staff raises, and it is rallying its members to write and call the Sacramento Democrat's offices to tell him so.

A post on its website titled, "Make Steinberg keep his word," noted that the state's No. 2 Democrat said this about public pension reform: "Will it cause some discomfort and unhappiness? Yes. Do you sometimes disagree with your allies and friends to do what you think is the right thing? Yes."

Then the organization, a nonunion advocate for state government managers and supervisors, performs a little political judo:

We couldn't agree with Sen. Steinberg's sentiment more: Doing the right thing sometimes causes discomfort and unhappiness.

That is why ACSS is calling on Sen. Steinberg to stop underhanded dealing to his allies and friends in the Legislature and start the difficult cuts he touts publicly by rescinding the raises he approved for employees in the Legislature after slashing your salary by 5%.

... Take a moment to let him know via email or calls to his office.

The supervisors' group is ticked over a recent Bee review of payroll records finding that at least 93 California legislative employees who earn more than $100,000 received raises this year and that more than 900 employees at all pay levels received pay hikes. The 120-member Legislature employs about 2,220 staff members.

That adds a bit of a sting for state workers whose pay and hours have been cut by nearly 5 percent since July 1. An ACSS poll of its members found that nearly six in 10 think the pay raises should be taken away.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg met with reporters on Monday to talk about the final four weeks of the legislative session. Among the topics he touched on: legislation that would change state and local public pensions.

Here are the high points of that part of the discussion with the Sacramento Democrat, according to notes passed on to The State Worker by Bee Capitol Bureau colleague Torey Van Oot:

On the timing of public pension legislation:

"Definitely by the end of the four weeks."

"The good thing is procedurally and logistically, the conference committee is obviously established and obviously this is an issue of utmost importance that we're going to ensure that the language is out there long enough for people to be able to read it, understand it, comment (on) it and see it. We're working real hard now to try to finish up the remaining issues and get it out as quickly as possible,"

On what issues still need to be hammered out:

The National Federation of Independent Business/California, a group that represents small businesses, has endorsed Proposition 32. The ballot measure would ban union and corporations from contributing money directly to candidates. It would also eliminate payroll deductions, unions' primary way of raising political money.

The federation joins others, including former state Sen. Gloria Romero in endorsing the measure.

"California's political system isn't working because the politicians we elect only work for the most well-funded special interests. While big corporations and labor unions always get what they want, small businesses and individual Californians find themselves on the losing end of new regulations, higher taxes and declining government services," said John Kabateck, Executive Director, NFIB/California, in a press release.

"Proposition 32 offers voters an opportunity to win back elected officials from the special interests that control them with their money and make politicians pay attention to California's needs again. As the Voice of Small Business in California, we're strongly urging Californians to vote Yes on Prop 32 because it cuts the powerful money tie between special interests and politicians and returns power back to the voters," he added.

The group said, in its press release, that Prop. 32 will address the problem of special interests by banning direct corporate and union contributions, banning contributions from government contractors and banning automatic deductions of wages to be used for politics.

A judge has cleared the way for a lawsuit to proceed against CalPERS over an unusual work arrangement that allows California Prison Receiver J. Clark Kelso to continue accruing state pension benefits even though his position was established by a federal court and he answers to a federal judge.

As we have previously reported, Daniel E. Francis v. CalPERS contends that Kelso's employment agreement illegally washes his pay through the state Administrative Office of the Courts so that the money can be factored into his CalPERS pension. Kelso has said the arrangement, while unusual, was vetted, is above board and legal.

Francis, the plaintiff, is a retired state worker and therefore a CalPERS member. CalPERS had argued he had no standing to sue. Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael P. Kenny ruled that Francis had the right to pursue the lawsuit as a taxpayer.

That decision means that the litigation can now focus on whether Kelso is a state worker on loan from the AOC to the federal court or a federal employee with an illegal pension-spiking arrangement. The receivership corporation reimburses the AOC for Kelso's pay and benefits. Ultimately, the state pays the receivership's costs.

Here's Kenny's ruling from last week:

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, much of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Today's column lays out more details of the Parks and Recreation secret leave buyout program and its connection to the discovery last week of $54 million the department had in two accounts -- even as it was planning to close 70 facilities around the state.

The Department of Finance didn't know about the money, which has been accumulating for at least 12 years, although the State Controller's Office did. Many department managers didn't know about the money either, and they worked to raise private money and build partnerships to keep facilities on the hit list open.

Imagine how the staff who beat the bushes for money and partnerships feel now.

Along with the State Controller's Office and the attorney general, Finance has launched an investigation of the Parks Department's budget, accounts and procedures. As you'll see in the outline below, its audit plan will initially unwind five years of records.

Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer said Wednesday that the Parks matter in relation to the state's budgeting process is analogous to a tripped fuse discovered during a home remodeling project.

"You go back and check all the fuses," Palmer said, so the state also is taking a wider look at how departments report their budgets.

Audit Plan - Parks

Employees at California State University, Sacramento, are difficult to manage because of a "state worker environment" fostered by the school's bureaucratic neighbors, according to an report commissioned by officials and obtained by The Bee.

Interim Vice President for Human Resources Christine Lovely asked McKnight Associates Inc., a Westlake Village-based university HR consulting firm, to follow up on a 2006 study that examined the school's Office of Human Resources. The firm gave its findings to officials in April, noting that the university's grievance caseload at the time was two to three times that of any other CSU campuses surveyed.

The numbers:

Sacramento: 114
Long Beach: 52
San Jose: 46
San Francisco: 38
Northridge: 37
Fullerton: 32

Sacramento State's Office of Employment Equity last year fielded 77 formal complaints of discrimination, harassment, retaliation and other types of civil rights issues, McKnight reported, and spent $83,885 for outside firms to investigate employment issues.

"It is also noted that grievances from the CSUEU union account for about two-thirds of the total," the report says.

McKnight said that the same problems existed six years ago, and cites a key passage of the 2006 report as a big reason:

"There was a consensus among those interviewed that the campus culture presents a challenging workforce to manage. It was most frequently described as a 'state worker' environment greatly influenced by its close proximity to the bureaucratic attitudes of State offices. It was made clear by mid-level administrators that a high level of 'management fatigue' in dealing with this environment has historically been present."

We verified the report's authenticity with Sacramento State. Here it is:

As reported by The Bee today, Parks and Recreation Director Ruth Coleman resigned this morning after revelations that the department has held on to tens of millions of dollars while threatening to close facilities and curb services.

The scandal broke after The Bee made inquiries into the Parks Department's finances, prompted by an investigation into a secret leave buyout program fostered by one of Coleman's lieutenants.

Here's Coleman's resignation letter to Gov. Jerry Brown:
120720 Coleman Resignation Letter

From The Bee's Matt Weiser:

State Parks Director Ruth Coleman resigned this morning and her second in command has been fired after officials learned the department has been sitting on nearly $54 million in surplus money for as long as 12 years.

Click here for more on this developing story.

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, much of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Today's column looks at the Parks Department leave scandal as a failure of management. In fact, if you talk to anyone who has looked at the issue of excessive state leave accrual, a common comment you'll hear is that it's primarily a management problem.

State policymakers have been talking about fixing it for years. Here's a proposal that the old Department of Personnel Administration made to SEIU Local 1000 back in 2005. The same proposal went out to all the unions that year, but it fell flat. The unions pointed out that the growing leave-balance problem was a management issue, not a rank-and-file problem. Managers pushed back. The idea fell flat.

Side note: The two sides did eventually agree that year on using a highest three-year average to calculate pensions for future hires.

Scroll down to Article 8 at the top of page 3:
DPA's 2005 bargaining proposals to SEIU Local 1000

From Bee Capitol Bureau colleague Jim Sanders:

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg announced plans Wednesday for a one-year pay freeze for Senate employees, but the move comes in the wake of a recent pay hike for hundreds of the chamber's aides.

Read the rest of Jim's report on our sister blog, Capitol Alert.

We can never get everything we learn into a news story. "From the notebook" posts give you some of the extra details behind the news.

So what's a "mission critical" retired annuitant, anyway?

We'll soon find out. As we've reported, the horse-trading between Gov. Jerry Brown and SEIU Local 1000 over furloughs included a mandate that departments purge their payrolls of RAs by Sept. 1. Only those deemed mission critical -- in other words, people whose departure would impair the normal function of the organization -- will be exempt.

A persistent rumor is wafting through state government that the California Association of Highway Patrolmen is pushing legislation that would reduce how much they contribute to their pensions.

While The State Worker loves a good pay-and-politics scandal as much as anybody, in this case the rumor is false.

Here's a recent email to The State Worker that succinctly explains the scuttlebutt we've been hearing:

California's largest public employees' union has tentatively agreed to accept furlough terms that will reduce employee pay by 5 percent starting July 1, but Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to accomplish the savings with a shortened workweek isn't part of the deal.

Service Employees International Union Local 1000's deal with Brown, announced just a few minutes ago, accepts 12 unpaid leave days over the next 12 months. Although employees' paychecks will show the monthly hit on their wages, they have some flexibility to schedule the time off.

The agreement doesn't affect any other aspect of Local 1000's current contract, including a scheduled 3 percent raise for top-step employees scheduled for July 1, 2013.

The union said members will have a chance to vote on the agreement on Wednesday at one of about 100 polling places set up around the state. The results of the vote will be announced July 2.

Brown also gave Local 1000 two items on its wish list, agreeing to terminate all but the most essential state retired annuitants and student assistants and to set up a task force on state outsourcing.

Departments will have until Sept. 1 to purge retirees and students from their payrolls, with exemptions only for those whose jobs are deemed "mission critical." The state won't hire either during the 12-month furlough period for SEIU-covered workers.

The Union of American Physician and Dentists has agreed to an 8-hours-per-month furlough for its members that will begin July 1.

The agreement covers roughly 1,800 doctors and dentists. The union has posted the details of the side letter that avoids reopening the union's full contract. Under the terms of the so-called "personal leave program," or PLP, the state deducts 4.62 percent of gross pay from each employee's monthly paycheck. They have some flexibility to schedule the time off, according to the union's summary of the agreement:

PLP 2012 must be used in the month in which it is earned. PLP 2012 shall be requested and used by the employee in the same manner as vacation or annual leave. If the employee has not submitted a PLP 2012 leave request by the 20th of the month in which PLP 2012 is accrued, the time shall be scheduled by his/her supervisor. When this is not operationally feasible, PLP 2012 shall be used before any other leave except sick leave.

That provision lines up with furlough deals recently accepted by other groups, including state fire fighters and Highway Patrol officers. UAPD is the sixth state employees' union to accept furloughs that will contribute to an estimated $839 million in payroll savings during the 2012-13 fiscal year.

Brown also agreed to create a Contracting Out Committee comprised of four UAPD representatives and four state officials. The "CoCo" will meet at least once every two months with an agenda to curb state job outsourcing.

The state's largest public employees' union, SEIU Local 1000, has been in talks with Brown for two weeks, but hasn't yet announced a furlough agreement.

Click here to open UAPD's summary of the side-letter deal.

Add another item to the long list of structural failings that have plagued the Board of Equalization headquarters: corroded pipes.

Department of General Services spokesman Eric Lamoureaux this morning confirmed that pipes in the building are deteriorated. General Services acts as the BOE's landlord.

"At this point it's isolated to waste lines," Lamoureux said, adding that no employee's health has been endangered.

The trouble surfaced on May 4 during the clearing of a clogged drain on the building's sixth floor. The pipe ruptured on the fifth floor, revealing extensive corrosion. Inspectors have since found corroded pipes on floors 7, 14, and 21.

The 24-story HQ at 450 N Street has a long history of structural woes: leaks, mold, burst pipes, unreliable elevators, trace levels of toxic substances and falling exterior glass panels.

RELATED POSTS
Glass falls from Board of Equalization HQ in Sacramento
More mold found at California Board of Equalization HQ
$10.6 million in repairs needed for BOE headquarters
Consultant evaluates BOE building
Another toxic turn for Board of Equalization headquarters
Board of Equalization director: We need new headquarters

PHOTO: The Board of Equalization building in Sacramento. / Sacramento Bee 2005, Jay Mather

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, most of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Today's State Worker column looks at the arguments for and against the state's hiring of retired annuitants and notes that all of the positions have flaws.

Here's a breakdown of $15 billion that state departments paid their employees in calendar 2011, with a breakout of how much of that went to retired annuitants:

From Sacramento's News10, this Wednesday night story:

SEIU Local 1000 has submitted a pay- and cost-reduction proposal to the Brown administration that includes flexible furloughs, but as of this morning has not received a response.

"Local 1000 has proposed that any reduction in pay would be in exchange for time off," the union said in an online statement. "Our proposal would maximize flexibility in how members take their time off."

The union also wants the administration to create a task force "with real authority to cut private contracting," and reduce the ranks of state retired annuitants and student assistants.

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, most of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

The Bee's State Worker column today dissects some of the politics in play over Gov. Jerry Brown's state worker pay reduction proposal as lawmakers prepare to pass a budget on Friday.

Here's the proposed budget language that confers authority on the governor to furlough state employees, among other things, to cut $839 million in the state's employee compensation costs.

Worth noting: Unlike the furlough era under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, all 21 bargaining units that represent some 183,000 organized state employees have current contracts through July 1, 2 or 3 of 2013, adding a new legal wrinkle to any litigation that imposing furloughs would spark.

RELATED POST:
Live Chat: The Bee's Jon Ortiz hosts: California Supreme Court rules on furloughs

Section 3.90

SEIU Local 1000 negotiators resumed bargaining with Gov. Jerry Brown's administration this morning, and are seeking cuts in outsourcing and ending the use of retired annuitants and student employees as conditions to accept a pay reduction.

The union said in a memo to members on its website that negotiators also want "maximum flexibility" for employees to take unpaid time off to meet Brown's goal to cut workers' hours and pay by 5 percent. The governor has suggested achieving the savings by putting state workers into a four-day workweek schedule of 9.5 hours per day, but is open to alternatives.

PHOTO: Gov. Jerry Brown / 2010 Sacramento Bee file, Hector Amezcua

SEIU Local 1000 President Yvonne Walker held an online town hall meeting on Saturday to discuss negotiations with Gov. Jerry Brown's administration over his proposal to cut employees' hours and pay by roughly 5 percent per month.

Formal talks started that day and continued Sunday. There's been no word on the status of the discussions or any agreement between the state's largest public employee's union and the administration.

In the following video, Walker says the union first proposed a four-day, 10-hours-per-day workweek, but that Brown's May budget revision give it a "twist": four 9.5-hour days.

Still, Walker gives Brown credit for including organized labor in his budget plans, for explaining to the unions why he wants $839 million in employee compensation cuts ($401 million from general fund wages) and for negotiating with the unions.

"I'm going to be honest with you. The 5 percent cut, that's real," Walker said, "But what's not real is how you get there. I think the bargaining teams have been spending a lot of time over this past week trying to get to that dollar amount in different ways."

The Association of California State Supervisors is running a poll on its website to gauge the popularity of various alternatives to Gov. Jerry Brown's four-day workweek proposal.

The Brown administration has said it will consider alternatives that accomplish the 5 percent cut in employee compensation costs the governor wants in the 2012-13 state budget, so ACSS asked its members for ideas and then used them for the online poll. The options include:

• Reinstituting the Personal Leave Program.
• Going to a one-day-per-month furlough.
• A five-day workweek with 7.5-hour shifts.
• Closing offices at 3 p.m. on Fridays.
• A 5 percent pay cut, working hours not impacted. (0.8 percent picked that option)
• Letting departments design their own savings plans.

The Association of California State Supervisors is reporting on its blog that Gov. Jerry Brown's administration has narrowed down which state workers' pay will be cut by more than 5 percent in the 2012-13 fiscal year:

Acting DPA Director Julie Chapman confirmed in a meeting today with your ACSS that potential cuts above 5% would target "agency secretaries and higher officials," not state supervisors, managers, and confidential employees.

In his May budget revision, the governor proposed furloughing workers two hours per week and reducing the state workweek to four days to cut employee hours and pay by 5 percent. He wants to bargain the cuts and is open to other ideas to achieve the savings as part of closing the state's $15.7 billion budget gap (and that's a charitable administration estimate).

The supervisors' association report answers one of the questions raised when Labor and Workforce Development Secretary Marty Morgenstern told reporters last month, "No one will excluded (from a pay reduction), except people at the very top. We'll have to do a little better than that."

Morgenstern didn't define who at the "very top" would be hit with a heavier pay cut. That sparked speculation in some quarters that excluded workers might get dinged more. Apparently, that's not the case.

Next question: How much is "a little better than that"?

PHOTO: Gov. Jerry Brown discusses his revised state budget plan during a Capitol news conference on Monday, May 14, 2012. / Associated Press, Rich Pedroncelli

James Ward, who has been fighting for the state job he lost three years ago, has lost his case before the State Personnel Board.

The five-member panel's decision last month was a rarity because it overturned an administrative law judge's proposed ruling. Most of the time the board goes along with what SPB judges decide.

Wendell Phillips, Ward's attorney, said today that his client wants to continue the fight in civil court. He will seek back pay with interest well in excess of $1 million in addition to being restored to his former job.

Ward learned of the SPB ruling last week, which says the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation didn't violate civil service rules when staff mistakenly promised him a full-time permanent position then changed his status to temporary.

Related post: The State Worker: Personnel case takes on how the state handles hiring

Ward sold his San Diego practice to take the dentist job at Ironwood State Prison in Blythe and hasn't worked since his release in 2009. He contends that the department should have stuck to its original offer, even though he signed papers acknowledging the change in employment terms after receiving assurances the job would eventually become permanent.

An SPB judge sided with Ward, but the board itself decided to set aside the proposed decision and hear the case on Feb. 7. The panel concluded that Ward lost the right to challenge the matter when he signed off on the change and didn't challenge it in writing within 30 days.

Here's the ruling:

From our sister blog, Capitol Alert:

Pay for California Gov. Jerry Brown, legislators and all statewide officeholders will be cut by 5 percent from current levels, the state's independent salary-setting commission decided today.

Read more by clicking here.

In a letter to members this afternoon, SEIU Local 1000 officials said that they are preparing to negotiate with Gov. Jerry Brown's administration early next month, spurred by his proposal to put state workers on a 4/9.5 workweek that would cut their hours and pay by 5 percent.

The chairs of Local 1000's nine bargaining units said that whatever concessions they negotiate will be put in a "side letter" agreement. That would avoid reopening the local's contracts.

Ahead of that, union officials are soliciting savings ideas to offer as alternatives to Brown's furloughs. Next week the local will conduct an online survey of members.

The union's bargaining team will review all of that information ahead of negotiations scheduled to start June 9. Whatever agreement is reached at the table will go to the rank and file for a ratification vote.

Here's the union's rationale for bargaining cuts:

"As the elected leaders of all nine bargaining units within Local 1000, we agreed that it's better to be aggressive participants in the effort to find solutions to achieve savings. We intend to be part of the action, not acted upon.

"We could have said 'no,' and demanded that the governor honor our contract. By staying engaged, we minimize the potential for a huge number of layoffs and even deeper cuts in vital services, like education and the programs that serve California's most needy."

Here's the entire letter:

The Senate Governance and Finance and the Senate Governmental Organization committees are meeting this morning to gather information on Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to reorganize state government.

Click here for the live video webcast on Cal Channel. The session started at 10:10 a.m. This link opens an audio feed of the session.

The California Channel also archives video.

The bipartisan Little Hoover Commission today voted 7-0 to endorse Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to reorganize state government.

The proposal calls for replacing five agencies with three, shuffling or eliminating some or all of the functions of several commissions and boards within the executive branch and folding the work of several departments into new or existing organizations. For more details and documents about the particulars, click here.

State law requires that the commission advise the Legislature on gubernatorial government reorganization initiatives. Either the Assembly or the Senate can block the proposal by majority-vote resolution within 60 days of the governor delivering the plan to lawmakers.

Otherwise, the reorganization becomes effective on the 61st day, in this case July 1. It would become operative one year later. There's no indication that there's significant opposition to Brown's plan.

Click here for more information on the Little Hoover Commission's website.

PHOTO: Stuart Drown, executive director of the Little Hoover Commission speaks at a 2011 legislative hearing. / Sacramento Bee file, Hector Amezcua.

Why not just extend the personal leave program?

It's a question that we've heard often in the last week as we sifted through emails from several hundred state workers reacting to Gov. Jerry Brown's 4/9.5 furlough plan to cut their pay by 5 percent through a 2-hours-per-week furlough.

Most of the calls, comments and emails about the policy fall into one of four groups: workers who would love the three-day weekends, workers who think the policy is a betrayal of their contracts, those who hate losing the pay and workers who think the switch would harm state functions.

(As we reported earlier, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office has some issues with Brown's workweek proposal.)

Then there's a fifth camp asking, why not simply return to giving state workers a floating unpaid day off each month? Departments already know how to manage it because of furloughs and the so-called "personal leave program" that was a provision in most of the latest union contracts.

So what do you think?

The Bee's state pay database guru Phillip Reese has run the numbers on what Gov. Jerry Brown's four-day, 9.5-hours-per-day workweek would do to the Sacramento region's economy.

The annual impact: $230 million in wages taken out of circulation.

Click here to read the entire story.

What does Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to restructure the state workweek mean for state workers and the public?

Is it a good idea or a bad idea? Will it really happen? What about other aspects of his plan to cut costs, like reducing outsourced work and eliminating hiring of retired annuitants?

Join us here at noon today for an hour of your questions and comments during what is sure to be a lively online chat about Brown's version of furloughs. You can even sign up for an email reminder at sacbee.com/live.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, met with reporters today and talked about Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to furlough state workers two hours per week.

Brown's plan also lengthens the state workday to 9.5 hours and shortens the workweek to four days. The changes would reduce employees' hours and pay by 5 percent and save the general fund some $401 million ($839 million all funds).

On cooperation between the unions and the governor to come up with a plan:

Just look at the experience in the Schwarzenegger years. ... When they tried to do it unilaterally, what was the end result? Lawsuits, a lot of uncertainty. The better and best way to accomplish the needed savings is to work with the people affected, and that's already going on."

On SEIU Local 1000's position:

"It would be one thing if SEIU Local 1000 was saying hell no and fighting the governor, but they're not doing that. They're actually appreciating the fact that the administration has reached out to them and that they are being brought in."

On the impact to his district and his assessment of the governor's moves:

"It's certainly hard on a lot of my constituents, The process by which the administration is trying to get to that goal, the money goal, I think has been very constructive so far."

On how the issue will play for the November election:

"You want to go into November with as much solidarity as possible."

PHOTO: Darrell Steinberg / 2011 Sacramento Bee file, Hector Amezcua

As our story in today's Bee notes, it's not clear whether rank-and-file state workers will be able to vote on any scheduling changes or other concessions that their representatives bargain to reach the payroll savings target in Gov. Jerry Brown's budget proposal.

Brown wants unions to take a 5-percent pay reduction with a commensurate cut in work hours each month to trim $401 million from the general fund's employee costs and $839 million from all funds in fiscal 2012-13. The governor's plan includes putting most employees on a 4-day, 9.5 hours-per-day workweek.

State law doesn't require a membership vote if a union reaches a side agreement with Brown. The associations' various bylaws, practices and processes determine whether they would issue ballots. Some union leaders also could seek guidance by surveying their members without a formal vote.

State employees would work longer shifts but fewer of them under the revised budget plan proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown this morning, saving the government more than $800 million.

Brown's budget envisions putting a four-day, 38-hour workweek for "the majority of state employees." If broken into four equal shifts, that translates into four 9.5-hour workdays and a reduction of hours and pay of eight hours over four weeks.

Brown's plan doesn't spare prisons or state hospitals: "The Administration will pursue commensurate reductions in work hours and pay for employees of entities that operate 24 hour a day, 7 days a week when implementation of the four-day workweek is not feasible."

The plan also cuts the state's operating costs by cutting energy usage at state-occupied buildings.

In sum, the workweek reconfiguration plan would save an estimated $839.1 million in fiscal 2012-13. Of that, $401.7 million would be savings for the general fund, which Brown says is confronting a $16 billion deficit.

The budget plan also anticipates more savings through cutting outside contracts, particularly in information technology services, eliminating "non essential" hiring of retired annuitants and cutting 11,000 state positions on top of the 15,000 eliminated in the 2011-12 budget.

PHOTO: Gov. Jerry Brown / Sacramento Bee file

From our sister blog, Capitol Alert:

Just how bad will it be?

Gov. Jerry Brown is releasing his revised budget in Sacramento at 10 a.m., and with his deficit estimate now at $16 billion, nobody thinks it'll be easy on the eyes. As Kevin Yamamura reported Sunday, "No sector that relies on state funding is likely to escape deeper cuts. Brown has already told state worker unions to expect at least a 5 percent compensation reduction."

Brown's morning news conference will be streamed live on the California Channel's website. The revised budget itself will posted online shortly after 10 a.m. at this link. Afterward, the governor will head to Los Angeles for a second news conference at 2 p.m. Come back to Capitol Alert later today for details and reactions from legislators and others.

May Lee, 91, hired on with the state's Department of Finance in 1943. Today, she continues to crunch numbers as a volunteer and mentor at the Department of General Services.

DGS recently produced a video about Lee's life and career, which DGS executive Joe Mugartegui puts in perspective: "She was our computer before we had computers."

From Dan Walters at our sister blog, Capitol Alert:

California's state and local government pension funds saw a 12.4 percent increase in their assets during the 2010 fiscal year, according to a new Census Bureau report, markedly higher than the national pension fund increase.

Click here for the rest of Dan's post. A spreadsheet with some of the pension data is posted below:

Editor's note, April 24, 10:35 a.m.: This post, orginally published on Monday, now includes a comment from the California Correctional Peace Officers' Association.

A plan rolled out today to overhaul the state's penal system includes a big change to how prisons are staffed.

"The Future of California Corrections: A Blueprint to Save Billions of Dollars, End Federal Court Oversight and Improve the Prison System" lays out a plan to centralize and standardize staffing instead of leaving such decisions to each prison as they are now.

The shift is part of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's effort to slash its costs by $1 billion and eliminate 5,500 positions in 2012-13.

JeVaughn Baker, spokesman for the 29,000-member California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which represents roughly 29,000 prison officers, said the union is evaluating the proposal.

"The total implications of CDCR's staffing plan is yet to be determined but we will continue to thoroughly evaluate the proposal," Baker said in an e-mail. "If the plan is successful at ensuring safe operations inside the institution and our potential concerns are addressed, there may be an opportunity for collaboration with the state in the endeavor."

Until now, a prison's management decided how to allocate staff based on how many inmates a facility housed. California's budget crises forced difficult and disparate decisions.

Some prisons cut correctional officers and other custody staff, which "led to situations at some institutions where general population inmates are no longer let out of their cells due to insufficient custody personnel being available to maintain safe and secure prisons," the CDCR report says.

Others preserved custody jobs and cut support staff. But many of those jobs are vital to keeping facilities up and running and aren't tied to how many inmates a prison is holding: "Further population-driven reductions from plant operations," CDCR says, "would leave the prisons with insufficient staff to maintain the physical plant of the facility."

Now, with the prison population shrinking, the state has a chance to standardize staffing and gain efficiencies from it. A "team of correctional experts" developed the standards for most of the prisons that will be running in 2013-14 when the new staffing plan is supposed to take hold, the report says. Some older institutions still need to be evaluated.

California State Prison, Sacramento, for example, will shed about 66 custody positions and add about 26 health care jobs. In sum, the facility will lose about 29 positions in 2012-13.

RELATED LINKS
Californians to Watch: Matthew Cate directs prison downsizing
The Future of California Corrections (executive summary)
The Future of California Corrections (full report)
Institution Profiles (details the staffing changes at each facility)
Court-ordered targets for California inmate population reduction (includes weekly census)

Hundreds of state jobs that were on the chopping block have been spared, according to an e-mail sent to State Compensation Insurance Fund employees this morning.

State Fund President and CEO Tom Rowe's message to staff said that 1,300 workers have left since last fall's announcement that the quasi-public agency would shed between 1,500 and 1,800 jobs.

"The number of positions that remain in the restructure plan is now small enough that we have decided to cancel the layoff," Rowe wrote in the e-mail that went out this morning.

The Little Hoover Commission has scheduled three days of hearings to consider Gov. Jerry Brown's government overhaul proposal starting Monday, 9 a.m. in the Employment Development Department Auditorium at 722 Capitol Mall.

The nonpartisan commission has until the end of this month to deliver its recommendations about the government reorganization plan to the Legislature. The plan goes into effect unless a majority in either the Assembly or the Senate reject it within 60 days of receiving the commission's report.

Brown's plan shuffles departments, eliminates agencies and consolidates others. The governor says the plan would streamline government and save money.

RELATED POSTS:
Jerry Brown starts clock on sweeping government overhaul
The State Worker: Will Jerry Brown's reorg plan fix California's bugs?
Column Extra: More about reorganizing California government

120419 LHC Press_Release_4-23-12

We can never get everything we learn into a news story. "From the notebook" posts give you some of the extra details behind the news.

Our report in today's Bee looks at how many first-time state workers the state has hired during Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown's return to the executive branch. We also compare those figures with how many workers the state hired during GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's final year.

What follows are hiring tallies by job class and department from data provided to us by the State Controller's Office. The numbers show how many individuals were hired from January 2011 through last February, two more months than the hiring tables published with today's report:

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, most of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Our column in today's fiber/cyber Bee examines the notion that government has "customers." Click here to view the section of the 2004 California Performance Review we referenced today, titled "Putting Californians First -- Creating a Customer Service Framework."

Read the column, check out the report and then take our poll:

Workers at the state Board of Equalization's Sacramento headquarters found mold between the building's ninth and 10th floors last month, although this time the discovery didn't displace any staff.

BOE spokesman Jaime Garza said in an email that "the area was immediately closed, the mold was removed, and Hygiene Technologies conducted testing which concluded the air was safe and clean."

Hygiene Technologies is the company contracted by the boardto handle air quality tests at the 24-story building at 450 N St.

While conducting some unrelated repairs on the building on Mar. 24, DGS staff and Hygiene Technologies employees came across the mold in a space above an empty storage area on the ninth floor. The company removed the mold last weekend.

The BOE has a long history of problems that have cost the state millions to repair and clean up, including water pipe leaks, mold, malfunctioning elevators and faulty windows. Earlier this year a glass panel fell eight floors and shattered on the sidewalk after it popped loose from the east side of the building. No one was injured.

Correction, 5:54 p.m.: An earlier version of this post incorrectly said that Hygiene Technologies was contracted by the Department of General Services.

PHOTO: The Board of Equalization headquarters / 2005 Sacramento Bee file, Jay Mather

Are state workers dragging down state budgets around the nation? Or have public employees and their compensation packages become convenient political scapegoats?

A year ago the PBS news show "Need to Know" took on what it calls "one of the most contentious arguments in the news today." We ran across the report this morning while surveying state worker news. Although the item ran on March 11, 2011, the topic remains relevant today.

Watch Union Salaries and State Budgets on PBS. See more from Need to Know.

Savings Plus, the non-CalPERS program that makes 401(k) and 457 retirement savings accounts available to most state workers, has announced its Sacramento front office is moving to a temporary location.

The office closing on 15th Street has been leased by the state for 15 years. Officials decided to close it to save costs. The program's public counter, which is the point of personal contact with state employees, is moving temporarily to a location on R and 16th streets. Look for the public counter's permanent space to open later this year in the same complex.

Savings Plus has combined assets of $8.2 billion.

Editor's note, 3:15 p.m.: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that the offices of Savings Plus were moving to temporary space. Only the public counter is moving.

Savings Plus is on the Move

A three-month countdown started today on Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to downsize state government.

The administration delivered an eight-page proposal to the Little Hoover Commission that would, among other things, reduce the number of state agencies from 12 to 10, consolidate some departments and eliminate others.

"The state's bureaucracy is a labyrinth of disjointed boards, commissions, agencies and departments," said Brown said in a press release this afternoon. "This common sense plan makes government more efficient, responsive and coordinated and will ultimately save taxpayer dollars."

Brown made the sweeping changes part of his state budget draft in January. Now Little Hoover has 30 days to review the plan and issue recommendations to the Governor and Legislature. The plan goes into effect unless a majority in either the Assembly or the Senate reject it within 60 days of receiving the commission's report.

Click here for the governor's letter to The Little Hoover Commission and summary of the consolidation plan. You can see the reorganization plan delivered to the commission by clicking the link below.

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, most of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Our column in today's fiber/cyber Bee filters the debate over state workers' wages through Senate Bill 1368, which would cap state pay -- including overtime -- at what the governor earns, about $174,000 per year.

So we asked our state worker pay database guru, Phillip Reese, to find out how many state employees would have been affected last year if SB 1368 had been law, and what job classes dominated that pay strata. We also asked him to look at UC system employees (the latest data we have for them is for 2010) to get a sense of how many of them made more than the governor. SB 1368 wouldn't affect them, though, because the UC system is constitutionally protected, but the bill encourages its leaders to conform to the cap.

Here's Phillip's email answering my questions:

About 2,015 civil service, CSU and legislative workers earned base pay over $174,000 in 2011, state controller's data show. Another 2,560 UC employees earned that much in 2010, according to the most recent data available from the UC system. So about 4,500 total -- a number that almost doubles if you look at total pay, which includes overtime, bonuses, etc. (I know Anderson, in his bill, cited "more than 8,000 workers," which is in line with my numbers if looking at total pay, instead of just base pay.)

By far, the largest job class in this group is physicians, mostly working at UC hospitals, state prisons and state mental health facilities. About 2,100 of the 4,500 are doctors, dentists or psychiatrists. Running far behind, but with more than 200 employees making that much, are judges, senior professors and top administrators at myriad agencies.

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Anderson bill would cap state worker pay at Jerry Brown's salary
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As reported last week, Senate Bill 1368 by Republican Sen. Joel Anderson, would set the top salary for state workers and officers at the $173,987 earned by the governor.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, has said the pay cap measure is "worth considering."

What do you think?

We never get all of what we learn into a news story, but this blog can give users the data, the notes and the quotes from the notebook that informed what was published.

Our story in today's Bee looks at which state jobs are drawing the most applicants from outside government and why, using data compiled by the State Personnel Board, which administers eligibility examinations for state civil service positions.

Below you'll find the list of all 1,390 jobs for which at least one applicant was deemed eligible when SPB made its first data run for our story on Mar. 2. This is not a help-wanted list, but an accounting of how many people have been deemed eligible for consideration when a job on the list opens.

Want more details? Check out the state's one-stop, everything-you-need-to-know website, www.jobs.ca.gov, where you can put a job title in a search engine and then click through to find out about pay ranges, tests, duties and minimum qualifications.

The state also keeps job eligibility lists totals online. Click here to look up the info, which can be sorted by job class and department. The figures are updated daily.

With just 400 to 450 words for our weekly State Worker column, most of what we learn each week never sees print. Column Extras give you some of the notes, the quotes and the observations that inform what's published.

Our State Worker column in today's Bee examines the dispute between James Ward, who worked as chief dentist at Ironwood State Prison until July 2009, and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Ward says he accepted in good faith a permanent position that was illegally voided when the state said the job was really temporary and eventually let him go.

The department says its employees were mistaken when they assured Ward the job was permanent. Returning him to a permanent state job now would bind departments to the erroneous actions of their lowest-level staff and managers, CDCR lawyers have argued.

SPB Judge Jeanne Wolfe heard arguments in the case and issued a decision last September in favor of Ward. As is its prerogative, the board rejected Wolfe's ruling and heard the case for itself last month. We expect a ruling within a few weeks.

Here's Wolfe's decision, which includes many more details about the matter than we could jam into our column:
James Ward v. CDCR

From The Bee's Dale Kasler:

CalPERS today moved toward reducing its investment forecast by a quarter percentage point, a move that would cost the state's general fund $167 million a year.

Click here to read more.

The recommendation goes to a vote of the full board on Wednesday.

The State Worker has received several emails from staff in the five agencies that are paying furlough back wages, all asking the same thing: When will they get their money?

Current and former employees of the Prison Industry Authority, the First 5 California Commission, the California Housing Finance Agency, the California Earthquake Authority and the California State Lottery who lost pay to furloughs are due to get the withheld money. They will not receive interest on the back pay. The payouts won't affect the state's general fund, since it doesn't furnish money to those five agencies.

The State Controller's Office has to cut the checks, so we asked SCO spokesman Jacob Roper when that would happen.

"We are working with other departments to get all the necessary information, and we should have a time frame this week," Roper said in an email this afternoon.

We never get all of what we learn into a news story, but this blog can give users the data, the notes and the quotes from the notebook that informed what was published.

Here are some sources that informed our story on Assemblyman Roger Dickinson's "Public Employees Bill of Rights," specifically its provision to give state rank-and-file employees first crack at state work.

California Government Code Section 19130-19135, which lays out the rules for state outsourcing.

Assembly Bill 1655, the "Public Employees Bill of Rights."

The Bureau of State Audits 2009 report on illegitimate contracting at the Department of Health Care Services and the Department of Public Health.

The Feb. 21 prepared statement on private contracting by Dr. Stuart Bussey, president of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists to the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Administration.

"The Hidden Branch of Government," SEIU Local 1000's latest installment on state outsourcing costs.

And below we've embedded data pulled from the Department of General Services' State Contract & Procurement Registration System for the first two months of this year.

(For more specific descriptions of specific contracts, click the second tab on the bottom of the spreadsheet and scroll right to the "Item Description" column. What even more? The eight-digit numbers in the far right column conform to the United Nations Standard Products and Services Code. Click here to open a search engine that lets you plug in the numbers to get a description of of the goods or services that the state purchased.)

Lawmakers lit into a California state prisons official Wednesday afternoon for his department's failure to account for its spending -- twice.

Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, called his budget subcommittee to order and then quickly skipped down to the second issue on the agenda, an update on why the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation hasn't produced spending reports that the Legislature demanded when it gave CDCR an extra $380 million last year.

As Cedillo and other angry assemblymembers at the hearing noted, the extra money went to Corrections while programs for the elderly, the sick and children all suffered cuts.

But after years of what amounted to fictional cost estimates and perpetually blown budgets for the state's most expensive agency, Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers agreed to a 2011-12 budget that gave the $9 billion-plus department the extra money. According to figures provided to The Bee by Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Bob Blumenfield's office, it was the fourth year in the past five that the Legislature kicked up extra money to cover CDCR's overspending. The augmenting funds totaled nearly $3 billion.

Last year, hoping to get costs under control, the Legislature added reporting strings to the money. The first report was due within 75 days of the budget's enactment last June. A second report is due today. Corrections hasn't produced any information yet.

The Bee's state worker pay database has been upgraded with features that give the information more context and provide it more quickly.

The data now include state employee wage histories from calendar 2007 through the end of last year. Clicking on an individual's name pulls up their historical wages graphically in the context of the average pay in their department. Scrolling over the data points in the graph reveals specific info.

The information on the site shows up more quickly than before because The Bee's web developers streamlined its layout and used a Google product that loads faster.

The screen capture above shows the wage history of one elected state worker in the Legislature. Click here to open the pay database page.

As we reported earlier this week, Department of Personnel Administration Director Ron Yank is leaving his post at the end of this month. The news -- which he spread himself in a series of personal calls and emails -- surprised labor leaders and state managers.

Late last month I asked Yank how he was enjoying his job as California's labor relations point man. "I love it," he said, and told me that he had no plans to leave.

I asked him that question nearly every time that we spoke over the last year. Yank didn't need the money, having retired from a long and successful career in labor law representing the California Correctional Peace Officers Association and other unions.

And I always wondered whether Yank, a marathon runner who admits to flashes of temper and salty language when it gets his point across, was suited to head a bureaucracy.

The DPA director sits at what can be an uncomfortable intersection between politics, law and finance. The job requires offering carrots and sticks to other department heads and labor leaders and walking a narrow path between the administrative independence that gives the office power while still executing the governor's agenda.

Ron Yank never struck me as a guy who was keen on asking for permission. His exit illustrated that fact. Instead of waiting for the governor's office to announce his departure and name a successor, he broke with protocol, picked up the phone and started calling union leaders to tell them he was leaving at the end of the month. The news quickly spread.

On Wednesday, Yank said that despite all of his assurances to the contrary, he took the post with the understanding he would leave after one year. That was all the time he was willing to take away from his family in the Bay Area, he said.

He didn't want to make that known for fear of hobbling his effectiveness. "If I'd been a lame duck, we couldn't have accomplished half the things we accomplished," he said as we drank coffee at a restaurant near DPA's offices on S Street.

What follows is an email to DPA staff with the subject line, "Why is Ron leaving his job after only one year?" Yank issued it a few hours after news of his exit surfaced on Tuesday. We're publishing it here after confirming its authenticity with DPA.

As of this morning, the Brown administration still hasn't issued an official statement about Yank's departure or named a successor.

Two sources have told The State Worker that Ron Yank is leaving the director's chair at the Department of Personnel Ad