Heavy rain and snow all day here in the Sunshine State. Also, an extremely turbulent weekend otherwise with nearly around the clock legislative sessions and announcements of layoffs. Finally, the Republican rot here in California seems to have become contagious to other states.
But first this news from the LA Times Governor prepares to send out 20,000 pink slips
More below:
The newest headline from the Sacramento Bee is, "Schwarzenegger to send layoff notices Tuesday Arnold was going to send out layoff notices last week but held off pending the likely approval of a State Budget. Now I'm not directly affected by this as I'm not paid out of the General Fund but it still seems moronic. Of particular personal interest, is the little note the members of SEIU are being exempted from this due to the fact that they've entered into a new labor agreement with the State subject to membership approval. Apparently they don't get improved pay and they loose Lincoln's Birthday and Columbus Day. On the other hand, they get two floating holidays as a replacement for the loss of these holidays. Finally, instead of being furloughed two days a month, they are only furloughed one day a month. Seeing as the first announcement on furloughs was for one day a month, I suspect their membership is feeling a little jerked around. It will be interesting to see if people and unions panic and approve this or similar agreements. I know my co-workers who are SEIU members were really ticked off last summer when they didn't get any raises and PECG members did. There were discussions about decertifying SEIU but nothing ever came of it. Frankly, I don't quite know where my union, PECG, is going to go as our contract is also under negotiations. I'm not immediately concerned as our labor agreements are written in such a way that the agreement remain in force until changed by negotiation and voting.
Part of the reason behind Schwarzenegger's layoff threats is that he was unable to get a State budget passed this weekend. Normally I'd provide you with a link to the Sacramento Bee. However, today there is an excellent article in the Gray Lady, The New York Times that provides a lot more context than I could ever provide and get enough sleep tonight: California, Nearly Broke, Edges Nearer Brink. Please note the little add on near the end where it appears that the State of Kansas is heading down the same road. In addition to the information provided in this article, it looks like a lot of our construction projects will be shut down except in the case where localities had stepped up and agreed to temporarily fund projects of value to them. Finally, we could have had a State budget this weekend except for coming up one, count 'em, 1, vote short. While things still might have not been that great, at least we could have started digging ourselves out of the hold the Republican Ayatollahs have put us in.
Post Script: My wife called my attention to a real nice column by George Skelton, in the LA Times California's GOP lawmakers should do the budget math