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Also read below the following two articles below:
Sacrificial scams
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How California Unions Hijacked the Golden State
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/05/16/How-California-Unions-Hijacked-the-Golden-State.aspx#page1
By LIZ PEEK, The Fiscal Times May 16, 2012
President Obama raked in a hefty
$15 million from Hollywood’s
elite at George Clooney’s home last
week. The $40,000 per plate star-studded crowd cheered the president’s
just-in-time conversion to same-sex marriage; are they equally enthused about
Mr. Obama’s economic prescriptions?
Californians
should know better. Their state, best known for red carpets, is awash in
red ink, just like the federal government. Earlier this week, Governor Jerry
Brown announced that the state’s budget deficit will approach $16 billion
this year, up from $9.2 billion projected just a few months ago. Years of
misguided financial policies have led to this: stifling taxes and savage cuts
to public services – including Medicaid, childcare and welfare programs.
Even movie stars occasionally venture out. What do they find? A state with 12 percent of the country’s population and one third
of its welfare recipients. A state with the nation’s
lowest bond ratings, the second-highest marginal income tax rate and the third
highest unemployment rate. Most important – a state
that CEOs rank the worst in the country for doing business. Dead last! For the eighth year in a row.
The upshot? Businesses are leaving California. Spectrum Location Solutions
reports that 254 California companies moved
some or all of their work and jobs out of state in 2011, an increase of 26
percent over the previous year and five times as many as in 2009. According to
the Labor Department, California’s private
employment actually shrank 1.4 percent over the past decade, while Texas added 1.15 million
jobs.
RELATED: Bloated Union Contracts Have Busted State Budgets
Last year California – once considered
the most prosperous state in the land – passed Assembly Bill 506, specifically
designed to keep cities in the state from rushing into bankruptcy. Vallejo
became one of the first in the nation to resort to this ultimate measure a few
years ago; Stockton, a city of 290,000, teeters on the edge.
What makes California so special? A profound antipathy to private enterprise and simultaneous embrace
of public employee unions. (Does this sound familiar?) In Shakedown,
author Steven Malanga notes that public school
teachers in the state are the highest-paid in the country, prison guards make
six-figure salaries and that “state workers routinely retire at fifty-five with
pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life…”
He also
chronicles the rise of the powerful public employee unions who, alarmed by
tax-restraining Proposition 13 passed in 1978, moved to solidify their clout
through strikes, advertising campaigns and political endorsements. Riding the wave of the tech boom thirty years ago, union-backed
state legislators passed uber-generous benefits packages for public employees
that continue to strangle local economies.
As Stockton proceeds through
the mediation process now required of cities considering bankruptcy, it faces
the most problematic legacy of union power – invincible public employee
pensions. The city pays $37 million annually into its pension scheme – a hefty
chunk of its annual $196 million budget. Another $17 million goes to retiree
health care. While corporations in bankruptcy expect to negotiate with all its
creditors, including pension funds, in California
the public unions, aided and abetted by CalPERS,
refuse to enter into discussions with cities seeking relief. Pensions are
sacrosanct – a position that may well end up before the courts.
While state
and local obligations have soared, California
has steadily hiked taxes and enacted regulations that make it difficult to do
business in the state, leading to shrinkage of the tax base. What to do? California needs to
enter the jobs sweepstakes, and staunch the exodus. This will require
addressing the complaints of large and small companies that have been wooed by Texas, Arizona
and other states.
RELATED: 10 Insanely Overpaid Public Employees
Unfortunately,
Joseph Vranich, a corporate relocation coach who chronicles
his state’s decline, says, “There is no evidence that California’s hostility to business has
changed one iota.” He cites as an example the recent decision by the
legislature not to revisit the state’s constricting laws concerning overtime.
“In most
states overtime terms are set by companies or unions,” he says. “In California, the
legislature has codified the rules. For instance, companies that would like to
move employees to a four-day week and add a couple of hours to the workday find
it too expensive. We had one company move to Oregon just to have more flexibility.”
************************
May 18, 2012
| Ryan Gabrielson
and Agustin Armendariz California
Watch
http://californiawatch.org/public-safety/overtime-pay-soars-state-run-police-force-16067
An unusually
high number of police officers at the state’s board-and-care facilities for the
developmentally disabled have doubled their salaries with overtime, enabling
some to earn more than $150,000 a year, a California Watch investigation has
found.
The
state-run police force, called the Office of Protective Services, last year
paid about $2 million in overtime to 80 of its officers. The officers patrol
five facilities that house about 1,800 patients with intellectual disabilities
in Los Angeles, Orange,
Riverside, Tulare and Sonoma
counties.
The small
police force is one of the most proficient in the state at accumulating
overtime – the percentage of officers boosting their salaries far exceeds the
proportion at other agencies.
In total,
the police department’s payroll has increased 50 percent through overtime in
the past four years. For several of the officers, their overtime payouts would
have required them to work 70 to 100 hours a week the entire year to earn the
extra cash.
Twenty-two
officers, about one-fourth of the entire police force, have claimed enough
overtime to double their salaries – a rare occurrence at other police agencies,
both big and small. The average salary for the 22 officers is about $124,000 a
year.
At one
point, the Office of Protective Services paid its officers overtime for
patrolling a nearly empty facility. Patrol
officers and detectives at the Agnews
Developmental Center
in San Jose
claimed hundreds of hours of overtime
– months after the institution closed in March 2009, finance reports show.
One officer
working at the state’s center in Tulare
County acknowledged in an
interview that he received overtime pay for hours spent sleeping at work. A
detective there was paid during a 2008 trip to Las Vegas that officials later said was
unrelated to his job, court records show.
As the
Office of Protective Services has accumulated overtime, questions have been
raised about the quality of the work taxpayers have received from the police
force.
A California Watch investigation in February
found that over the past decade, the Office of Protective Services failed to
conduct basic police work even when patients died under mysterious
circumstances. State officials have documented hundreds of cases at the facilities
of abuse and unexplained injuries, almost none of which have led to arrests.
In March,
state officials announced they had hired an independent manager for the Office
of Protective Services to oversee new training guidelines, and state lawmakers
have introduced legislation that would direct serious criminal investigations
to outside law enforcement, among other changes.
No one has
claimed more overtime than Thomas Lopez, an entry-level patrolman at the Porterville Developmental Center.
On top of his base salary of $54,133, Lopez’s paychecks have included at least
$80,000 in overtime every year for much of the past decade, doubling and
tripling his compensation.
In 2008,
Lopez collected $208,000 in pay, including $146,000 through overtime. To
achieve that income level, Lopez would have had to work 107 hours each week for
the entire year, without any vacation or leave time.
Overtime has
lifted Lopez into the same income bracket as doctors at the developmental
center where he works. He’s paid more than his boss, Terri Delgadillo,
the Department of Developmental Services director, who earns $158,000 for
running the $4 billion state agency.
Even Lopez
acknowledged that his paychecks are large. “If I were investigating overtime,
I’d be the top suspect,” said Lopez, who owns seven houses worth $1.2 million
and two classic cars valued at $50,000 each, according to two car auction
websites.
Last year,
Lopez received $150,275 – just below the salaries of Attorney General Kamala
Harris and state schools superintendent Tom Torlakson.
Sixty percent of Lopez’s income was from overtime.
Lopez
contends he spends every waking hour at the Porterville center. He volunteers for day
shifts and night shifts, weekends and holidays. The patrolman said his
superiors are responsible for his hours, not him.
“The only
thing I can tell you is it was signed and allowed by a sergeant,” Lopez said.
“Even people who don’t like me will testify I was there.”
Bob Lewis, a
commander with the Office of Protective Services, was responsible for police
operations at the Porterville
center most of the past three years and had final authority over Lopez’s
overtime hours. The office’s overtime policy directs
commanders to “reduce OT whenever possible.”
Lewis
declined to comment because the Department of Developmental Services does not
permit employees to talk to reporters. “I wish I could speak with you, but I
can’t,” he said. Lewis received a promotion in September and now leads the
police force at the Sonoma
Developmental Center.
Documents
show the vast majority of extra hours at the Office of Protective Services are
for patrol shifts, with officers waiting for calls about incidents or circling
the institutions’ parking lots, rather than investigating potential abuse
cases.
“At night,
it gets a little bit slow. It’s hard not to doze off
sometimes,” Lopez said. “You try to stay up. But you better take your calls,
and you better take your reports. It’s hard because that time drags.”
When asked
if he sometimes sleeps during overtime shifts, Lopez replied, “Yes.”
The force
currently has 27 vacant jobs out of 94
positions, but most of the shifts are covered by increased overtime and by
hiring retired officers for temporary duty. Some of those officers – so-called
retired annuitants – also have earned overtime pay.
Coby Pizzotti, a lobbyist for the
California Statewide Law Enforcement Association, which represents the
institution’s police, said the overtime payouts are a symptom of understaffing
at the developmental centers. Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa and
the Lanterman Developmental Center in Pomona, for
example, are staffed with just four patrol officers
each.
“The
budgeted positions aren’t sufficient to do the job adequately without getting
an incredible amount of overtime,” he said.
The base pay
for the force averages about $44,000 – relatively low compared
with departments of similar size. At the Vallejo Police Department, for
example, the average base pay is $98,000.
Delgadillo, the agency’s director, declined to comment
on her department’s overtime payouts. But in a statement, the department said
overtime was required “to meet the safety and security needs of the 24-hour
licensed residential health care facilities” amid a state hiring freeze and
worker furloughs.
“These
residents require constant and immediate law enforcement supervision for all
court hearings, community outings and medical appointments outside of the
secure treatment area,” the department said.
At the same
time, the department said it has moved to curb overtime payouts. In 2009, it
implemented a new policy that requires
police supervisors to approve overtime requests in advance and to assess
whether officers’ workloads are reasonable.
Patricia
Flannery, the official who oversees operations at California’s developmental
centers, that year also ordered an internal audit of police overtime. Documents from the audit, obtained through a
public records request, do not show any attempt to evaluate whether the
officers actually worked the hours on their timesheets.
Between 2009
and 2011, overtime payouts at the Office of Protective Services declined about
25 percent. State officials said their “aggressive actions” to curb overtime –
as well as using closed-circuit cameras to monitor patients instead of security
towers – has led to the drop in overtime.
Despite the
changes, seven officers at developmental centers still managed to double their
pay in 2011.
City police
and sheriff departments often generate large overtime bills. But the Office of
Protective Services far outpaces other California
law enforcement agencies in overtime, according to state and local payroll data
of five agencies reviewed by California
Watch.
The
developmental center police officers on average added $19,600 to their
paychecks through overtime in 2010 – $2 million in total, according to state
pay data. Overtime accounted for 28 percent of all Office of Protective
Services compensation that year. Eleven officers doubled their salaries with
overtime.
By
comparison, overtime was 12 percent of pay for police officers in Vallejo and at the
similarly sized Santa Cruz Police Department. And at larger agencies, such as
the California Highway Patrol and the San Jose and San Francisco police
departments, the percentage of overtime hovers between 6 and 10 percent of pay,
an analysis of local pay data shows.
To Loren DuChesne, former chief of investigations for the Orange County
district attorney’s office, the overtime looks suspicious. DuChesne
examined the Office of Protective Services for the state attorney general's
office a decade ago, finding shortcomings in the force's ability to conduct
criminal investigations.
“What I’m
seeing here is just a carte blanche abuse,” DuChesne
said. “Given the nature of the job, those guys on graveyard (shifts) at Sonoma or Lanterman, if you had more than one person, you had to be
the most bored person that ever worked in a law enforcement vehicle.”
Lopez is
among dozens of developmental center police officers who have recorded extra
hours on their timesheets.
One
patrolman at the Fairview Developmental Center
in Costa Mesa,
Daniel Butler, regularly collected more money from overtime than from his base
pay. He worked for 14 years at the facility, but netted at least $60,000 a year
in overtime from 2007 until his retirement in March 2011.
Butler did not respond
to repeated interview requests.
Another Porterville officer, Rick
Shannon, neared Lopez’s overtime levels in 2008. His paychecks included
$114,000 from claiming extra hours.
Shannon,
whose base salary was $50,000, was on pace to exceed $100,000 in total income
for at least the fourth straight year when he suffered a fatal heart attack in
July 2010 in the middle of a shift. In just seven months that year, Shannon received $44,830 in overtime.
At the
Porterville center, supervisors have long approved overtime claims without
verifying the patrol officers actually showed up for the shifts, said Martin
Espinoza, a former detective at the institution. (Records show Espinoza took
only $8,000 in overtime pay during the four years before he retired.)
“I couldn’t
comprehend how they could allow such a thing,” Espinoza said of the overtime
claims. “These people are fairly intelligent and can figure some of this stuff
out. It was so obvious.”
Indeed, a Tulare County
grand jury in 2010 indicted the Office of Protective Services’ police chief and
a top detective on embezzlement charges
related to overtime abuse.
The police
department in the town of Porterville found
evidence that Scott Gardner, the developmental center’s investigator, claimed
overtime hours on days when he was in Las
Vegas, said Capt. Eric Kroutil,
who conducted the investigation for the Porterville Police Department.
The
detectives concluded that Jeffery Bradley, then chief of the Office of Protective
Services, had sanctioned Gardner’s
overtime. Bradley and Gardner were indicted on embezzlement charges in February
2010, but the prosecution was short-lived.
A judge
threw out the charges last year, saying an Office of Protective Services
internal investigation into the matter violated Bradley and Gardner’s
rights under the California
Peace Officers’ Bill of Rights. The internal investigation had been
characterized as “administrative” rather than potentially criminal, meaning any
evidence collected could not be used in a court of law.
Gardner declined to speak with California Watch. Bradley referred questions
to his attorney, W. Scott Quinlan, who did not respond to several phone calls
and e-mails. The Department of Developmental Services fired Bradley after his
arrest, and Gardner
resigned. Bradley has since appealed his dismissal.
Overtime at closed facilities
Patrol
officers with the Office of Protective Services have accumulated overtime even
without crimes to investigate or patients to protect.
At the Agnews Developmental Center
in San Jose,
which closed in March 2009, officers accumulated between 200 and 460 hours in
overtime pay to patrol empty buildings in the three months after the facility
shuttered.
Agnews officers claimed 1,307 extra hours in total
during those months. By comparison, that’s twice the number of hours taken by
officers and detectives at the Lanterman
Developmental Center
in Pomona,
which then housed 440 patients with cerebral palsy and other intellectual
disabilities.
The Department
of Developmental Services operated an outpatient clinic at Agnews
for two years after the closure. In a written statement, state officials said
the agency “remained responsible for the safety and security” of the center as
long as it owned the property.
State
officials did not provide an explanation for why the Office of Protective
Services spent more on overtime at Agnews than at Lanterman in 2009. But they said the Agnews
overtime was necessary, “as the two full time peace officers employed were insufficient
to cover the required 24 hour schedule seven days per week.”
Police
overtime is supposed to serve a law enforcement purpose, protecting people or
investigating crimes, said Leonard Matarese, a
criminal justice consultant at the International City/County Management
Association.
Matarese, a consultant and
retired Florida police chief, said departments should account for extra hours
on a weekly, if not daily, basis. The number of extra hours alone at the Office
of Protective Services – 65,000 a year on average from 2008 to 2010 – raises
alarms about the institution force.
“As a police
chief, I just wouldn’t allow that,” Matarese said.
“It sounds like it’s completely out of control.”
Patrolman cashes in on overtime
Lopez,the entry-level
patrolman in Porterville, owns seven houses
worth a combined $1.2 million, scattered across Porterville
and the Los Angeles
area. Lopez lives in one of his Porterville
homes – a nondescript tan structure with a well-manicured front yard. The
patrolman said he uses the house primarily to sleep and store his belongings.
In the
garage of his main residence, he keeps two pristine 1956 Chevrolet Bel Airs, collectors’ items that gleam with the original
factory paint colors of “Tropical Turquoise” and “Sierra Gold.” Each car is
worth at least $50,000, or about the same as Lopez’s base salary.
His
paychecks have included at least $80,000 in overtime every year for much of the
past decade, state data shows.
Porterville,
where Lopez works, is home to more than 500 people with developmental
disabilities. About 200 of the patients are inmates, placed at the center by
courts because they are unfit to stand trial. Because of this, a majority of
the Office of Protective Services is based at Porterville.
Some days,
Lopez said he earns extra hours by standing guard in the secure housing units.
Other days, the overtime calls for him to transport patients to appointments
and court dates outside the developmental center.
But many
shifts don’t require him to do anything but show up – long stretches
spent watching movies on his laptop and napping, he said.
“How many
times can you spin around the facility?” Lopez said of his patrol work. “You’re
waiting for a call, waiting for a help call, waiting for a report.”
Few at the
Office of Protective Services have ever worked for a major law enforcement
agency. But Lopez received his basic training at the Los Angeles Police
Department’s academy before signing on with the developmental center force in
1996, personnel records show.
Judging by
his training, which could have placed him at a much larger and better-paying
police force, Lopez’s decision to work at the Office of Protective Services is
unusual. The department typically hires detectives from other state agencies,
such as the Department of Social Services, and other people with no law
enforcement experience.
Lopez’s
reported workweek is unusual, even if he spends a portion of it idling. In an
interview, Lopez claimed he worked regular 12-hour shifts every week, and some
days, he would work 20 hours.
In 2011,
state pay data shows, Lopez’s workload averaged 85 hours a week at the Porterville center for 52
weeks to earn his $144,000 income. Of that, $90,730 was overtime.
Last year
was nothing compared with 2008, when Lopez’s compensation peaked at
$208,000 – 70 percent of it overtime pay. His
timesheets claimed an average of 107 hours of work every week. He claimed no
sick days or vacation.
Department
of Developmental Services officials would not answer questions about Lopez’s
overtime, citing California
law making personnel information about police officers confidential.
Martin
Espinoza, the recently retired detective at Porterville, wondered how Lopez
avoids crippling fatigue from putting in more than 200 overtime hours a month.
“How is that
possible?” Espinoza said. “You’ve got to sleep sometimes.”
************************
Sacrificial
scams
by Ann Coulter
05/16/2012
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=51548
The real class warfare in this country isn't rich vs. poor, it's government employees vs. we, the taxpayers, who pay
their salaries.
Working for the government is supposed to be a trade-off: You can't be fired
and don't have to exert yourself, but you will receive smaller remuneration
than in the private sector, where layoffs are common (especially in the Obama economy!). Instead, government jobs are safe, secure,
pressure-free -- and now, amazingly lucrative!
Whether it's in Wisconsin, Illinois, California or the nation's capital,
today's public sector workers expect to do little or no work (I'm not counting
partying in Las Vegas as "work"), and then be lavishly compensated.
Often, the only heavy lifting they do all week is picking up their paychecks.
When government employees mobbed the state capitol in Wisconsin last year, the upside was: They
got to bully people. The downside: Voters finally found out what these public
servants were being paid.
Their compensation included not only straight salary, but also lavish overtime
benefits, pensions, health care plans, sick days and vacation time (most of
which they spent protesting).
The unions thought they could fight back against Gov. Scott Walker's tiny
pension rollbacks without anyone finding out the details. Most people saw what
public employees were getting and assumed it was a misprint.
Two years ago, seven bus drivers in Madison,
Wis., made more than $100,000 a
year.
A few years before that, we found out that the city manager of little Bell, Calif.
-- per capita annual income $24,800 -- was making $787,637, or including
benefits: $1.5 million a year. The chief of police was getting $457,000 a year
-- $770,046 counting benefits -- making him the first chief of police to commit
highway robbery on the job. The assistant city manager was taking home $376,288
per year, for a total compensation package of $845,960.
All were
Democrats, the party of Big Government.
Speaking of which -- whatever happened to that investigation Gov. Jerry Brown
was launching into these thieving public servants drawing million-dollar
pensions from California
taxpayers? The Bell scandal broke during the California gubernatorial
race between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, who was then state attorney general.
Brown vowed a no-holds-barred inquiry.
Anyone seen his report yet?
Jerry Brown will demand to see Obama's birth
certificate before he will call for a rollback of these undeserved,
million-dollar government pensions.
Less than 20 percent of private sector employees get pensions. Most people save
their own money for retirement -- for example, through 401(k)s.
By contrast, government employees expect to be paid by us for the rest of their
lives.
Former representative and amateur home pornographer Anthony Weiner was a member
of Congress until he resigned last June in order to spend more time with his
hard drive. He will probably end up collecting about a million dollars from his
80 percent taxpayer-funded government pension.
These are the "1 percent" deserving of the public's wrath: We're
paying their salaries. We weren't taxed to pay Mitt Romney's salary at Bain
Capital. We aren't taxed to pay the salaries of Jamie Dimon
or Alex Rodriguez. Anthony Weiner? Him, we pay for.
Government employees expect to live like something out of the czar's court --
and then have us admire them as if they're Rosa Parks.
At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Barack
and Michelle Obama both paid heartfelt tributes to
themselves for passing up money-grubbing private sector jobs to work in
"public service."
In her speech, Michelle boasted that she had "tried to give back to this
country."
"... That's why I left a job at a law firm for a career in public service,
working to empower young people to volunteer in their communities."
She was hired by the University
of Chicago Hospital as
soon as her husband became a state senator. When he was
elected to the U.S. Senate,
her salary nearly tripled, from $121,910 to $316,962 -- and the junior senator
from Illinois
returned the favor by sending taxpayer dollars the hospital's way.
By Obama's second year in the U.S. Senate, in 2006, Michelle Obama's compensation from "public service" was
approximately $375,000 a year -- more than triple the average salary for a
lawyer in the United States
with 20 years' experience.
(America
to the Obamas: "You two have sacrificed enough.
Please retire and kick back a little!")
Vice President Joe Biden, long touted as the poorest U.S. senator,
took home $248,459 in household income in 2006, including his public school
teacher wife's salary, also paid by taxpayers. In 2007, these working poor made
$319,853. This puts the couple nearly into the top 1 percent of all earners in
the U.S.,
where the median household income was $48,201 in 2006 and $50,233 in 2007.
A career in "public service" pays well.