Sunday, August 31, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Hundreds of L.A. County social workers either liars or really bad drivers, audit suggests
The L.A. Daily News reports:
In yet another stinging audit of Los Angeles County's Department of Children and Family Services, a new investigation has found that hundreds of social workers in the past two years racked up $1.1 million in vehicle-damage claims that included a host of questionable payouts, officials said Tuesday.
Auditors said one social worker sought reimbursement for vehicle damage while off-duty, others forged supervisors' signatures on claims and dozens of claims for windshield damage were paid out at an average cost of $950 when the usual cost is about $265.
In one case, auditors said, a social worker claimed a vehicle was totaled and filed a claim exceeding $10,000 - more than the vehicle's fair market value - even though a police report described the accident as a minor "fender bender."
And overall, auditors said a widespread lack of management oversight and controls in reimbursing the county's 3,000 social workers for work-related vehicle damages from July 2005 to November 2007 resulted in nearly 700 claims.
"We took a sample and discovered 80 employees had filed approximately 170 claims," said acting Auditor-Controller Wendy Watanabe. "That's an average of two or more claims per employee. That seems very excessive.
New Illinois AFSCME contract: 15 percent wage hike over four years
Pantagraph reports:
SPRINGFIELD -- Prison guards and other unionized state workers began voting this week on a contract proposal expected to give them raises totaling more than 15 percent over the next four years.
Although details of the proposed agreement with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees haven't been released, union members and legislative sources familiar with the pact said it includes annual wage hikes averaging 3.8 percent.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
New Jersey Declines While Government Grows
Steven Malanga in The New York Post reports:
From 2003 through 2007, while the nation's private economy soared, only tax-supported government jobs grew robustly in Jersey. Private employment increased a meager 1.8 percent, mostly in low-wage service jobs. In 2006, when the country was in the midst of an economic boom that produced government surpluses everywhere, Jersey faced a crushing $4.5 billion budget shortfall that prompted an embarrassing shutdown of state government.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Boston Bonuses boost City Council staff pay
The Boston Globe reports:
The City Council has been awarding large bonuses to members of its staff, quietly boosting the pay of some political appointees to levels that are well beyond the salary ranges authorized for those positions in city statutes, according to a Globe review of public records.
Under the guidance of City Council president Maureen Feeney, the council paid the council's staff director, Ann Hess Braga, $108,000 in 2007, including two bonus checks totaling $23,700. At the time, the salary range set by city ordinance for the position was $65,000 to $85,000 annually. Six other council staff members also received bonuses that pushed their pay beyond statutory limits.
In addition to the overall council staff, councilors also have also generously rewarded their personal aides and researchers, pushing through midyear and Christmas-time bonuses as high as $10,000 as last-minute agenda items, which received no debate or public airing before approval.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Paterson Boosts Troopers 14% Pay Raise Follows Contribution
The New York Sun reports:
Weeks after state police troopers padded Governor Paterson's campaign war chest with a $25,000 contribution, the governor is awarding the troopers a 14% pay raise over four years.
The contract agreement with the Police Benevolent Association of the New York State Troopers could present a problem for Mr. Paterson, as he has been sounding the alarm over the health of the state's budget and has summoned lawmakers back to Albany for a special session tomorrow to trim the budget by $600 million.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Rhode Island State workers retiring early because of health-insurance costs
The Providence Journal reports:
Linda Folcarelli loves her state job too much to leave. But she loves her state health benefits too much to stay.
So when the General Assembly enacted a new law requiring state employees to pay more — in many cases, a lot more — for their medical coverage when they retire starting Oct. 1, she had to make a difficult choice.
Folcarelli, who is 51 and single, could wait another 5½ years to retire from her $46,600-a-year accounting job at the sate Department of Corrections and get her full pension — but pay twice as much for her medical benefits.
Or, she could get out now.
Nonunion Cook County employees got 8 percent raise last year
The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
At a time when folks are being laid off, losing their homes to foreclosure and paying the highest sales taxes in the country, Cook County employee paychecks are getting fatter.
County workers who were not promoted to higher paying jobs received an average pay increase of about 8 percent between July 2007 and July 2008, an analysis of the county payroll shows.
That's more than triple the 2.5 percent average pay hike workers in Illinois and four surrounding states received between June 2007 and June 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's also more than double the 3.8 percent cost-of-living pay hike top state officials received in July.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Alabama's Largest County is on the brink of bankruptcy
Tennessean reports:
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Alabama's largest county appears headed for the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, a $3.2 billion mess created by the nation's credit crunch and a colossal, corruption-riddled sewer project.
Politicians in Jefferson County — which has 658,000 residents and includes the state's biggest city, Birmingham — are struggling to find a way out of the jam, but they have mostly abandoned talk of raising taxes and fees after running into fierce opposition at raucous public meetings.
Struggling T gives executives a 9% pay raise
The Boston Globe reports:
The MBTA's general manager gave a 9 percent raise to 240 executive employees this week after warning just a week ago that a financial crisis could spur a significant fare increase in 2010.
Daniel A. Grabauskas said the raises match the salary increases that union employees are receiving after going two years without a contract and three years without a cost-of-living increase. But his decision to include managers - who make an average of $83,650 - is sparking criticism, given the T's dire finances.
"The agency's broke," said Senator Robert L. Hedlund, a Weymouth Republican who serves on the Transportation Committee. "It's amazing in this day and age [that] management is never asked to sacrifice."
Friday, August 15, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
3rd Chicago cop charged in insurance fraud case
The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
A widening federal probe into cops taking payoffs tied to insurance or towing scams has led to fraud charges against a third officer.
The probe could reach at least a dozen police officers, sources have said.
On Tuesday, prosecutors charged Chicago Police Officer Scott Campbell, 42, with setting up a scheme to make it look as if someone had stolen his 1996 green Volkswagen Passat.
Federal prosecutors say Campbell arranged to have the car taken and sold in pieces. State Farm Insurance paid Campbell about $4,000 for what they believed was a stolen vehicle.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Bankrupt Vallejo bleeding its police force
The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
Vallejo, already in an economic tailspin, has lost about 20 percent of its police force since the city began its slide into bankruptcy.
About 25 of its 150 or so sworn officers have retired or left for other cities, afraid their pensions or salaries may be slashed if a federal bankruptcy court allows the city to void its union contracts.
"It's a tragic loss for this city," said Vallejo police Lt. Don Hendershot. "We've lost a lot of dedicated, experienced officers. It's very sad seeing these guys go, but I understand why they're leaving."
The North Bay city of 117,000 filed for bankruptcy in May, faced with a $16 million deficit, an imploding housing market and skyrocketing public employee costs. A U.S. bankruptcy judge in Sacramento is expected to rule by the end of the month whether the city meets Chapter 9 bankruptcy criteria and can begin renegotiating its debts.
News of the bankruptcy had an immediate impact on local crime, Hendershot said.
"As soon as they started talking about it, back in February, we saw crime jump," he said. "Criminals know we're short staffed. Now we're seeing people coming here from Richmond and Oakland, because they think it's fertile ground."
Monday, August 11, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
Dangerous Times as Government Grows
Mary Laney at The Chicago Daily Observer reports:
These are dangerous times we’re living in. Dangerous times for Americans who want to keep their inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Government is growing at an alarming rate and paying itself hefty salaries.
In Grover Norquist’s book, Leave Us Alone, he writes:
“In 2004, the average wage-and-benefit package for a private-sector worker was $51,876. The average federal worker earned $100,178 in wages and benefits. (For wages alone, private sector workers earned $42,635 and federal employees took home $66,589.) Total wages and benefits see federal workers taking in almost twice as much each year.” Besides the wage disparities, government leaders are telling us, the private citizens, what we can do, when we can do it, and what we have to give up.
If we sell our homes, we now have to pay our local government a sales tax on the sale. If we own a car, besides a license and insurance, we have to pay our city for a sticker. If we go to a movie, a theatre, a sports event, a restaurant, a hotel, or take an airplane, we have to pay taxes to the government. There are growing taxes and fees on our phones, cell phones, gasoline, heating fuel, electricity, water, cable television, and everything we need to buy.
We’ve been told we can’t have a gun in our home to protect ourselves, can’t put fences in our yards above a certain height, have to pay a fee to construct a fence, have to pay thousands to get a permit to build swimming pools in our yards, and have to pay growing property taxes to pay for the now exorbitant salaries for school administrators. (If you don’t think their salaries are high, a friend recently told me that his wife, a teacher for fourteen years, was made an assistant superintendent her last year and retired with the equivalent of a $2 million annuity). And your tax dollars are paying for it.
Now the government is talking about cashing in on private industry profits.
We’re hearing a lot of politicians talk about raising taxes on windfall profits and spreading the money around to those who need it. Their talk might sound good to a lot of people, until people begin to look at what such a move means to their investments and pensions. It would mean they’d get a lot less than they thought they would – with the money going from their pensions to people who the government decides need it more. To me, that is socialism. Marxism. I prefer living in a democracy, a republic that is a government by the people, for the people and of the people. I prefer living in a nation where people have the freedom to work, earn a living, and leave something to their children.
If government wants to get into the business of taxing windfall profits, why doesn’t it look at the Teachers Union, the largest in the nation? That Union has money to give untold thousands of dollars to political candidates and funding to a political party. Why doesn’t the government ask the Teachers Union to instead put that money into the schools it says need more money? Elected officials complain that some schools have more money than others. That’s because schools are funded with the property taxes paid by the residents in their areas. Where there are higher property taxes, there are better schools. It’s not a good plan, but it’s the way the government leaders have set it up. Our property taxes are also paying the teachers’ salaries and the superintendents, assistant superintendents, deputy superintendents and support staffs.
Government has been growing at an alarming rate, both nationally, state wide, countywide and citywide.
We’re now working for and paying the government rather than the government working for us. It’s time for Americans to wake up and demand their rights—a full accounting of all government jobs, contracts and expenditures. It’s our right.
These are dangerous times we’re living in.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Pennsylvania Democratic Bonus Scandal and DeWeese
Philadelphia Inquirer reports:
Perhaps repeating the following statement often enough will make it come true:You'll want to read the whole thing.
Democrats in Harrisburg will never convince the public they've changed their selfish, arrogant ways until Rep. Bill DeWeese (D., Greene) is removed as House majority leader.
The latest person to acknowledge that fact also happens to be the most important thus far - Deputy Speaker Josh Shapiro (D., Montgomery). Shapiro called on DeWeese on Monday to resign his leadership post.
"We can't do better ... until we dedicate ourselves to a new direction," Shapiro said.
The indictments of 12 current and former House Democratic staffers and legislators, including DeWeese's chief of staff and his top lieutenant, former Rep. Mike Veon of Beaver County, should have been the final clue for DeWeese that it's time to go.
A grand jury laid in out in embarrassing detail how Democratic leaders allegedly doled out taxpayer-funded bonuses to staffers as rewards for campaign work, which is illegal.
DeWeese rebuffed the call for his resignation and said he believed Shapiro "has been distraught since he was named in the grand jury's presentment." That would be hilarious, if it weren't so despicably desperate. Shapiro isn't "named" for misconduct in the report; his name appears in an email written by DeWeese's chief of staff, directing that an aide receive a $1,000 bonus for "knocking on doors" in Shapiro's district. Meanwhile, DeWeese's name appears at least 19 times in the grand jury report.
Another Chicago Alderman Pleads Guilty to Taking Bribes
The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Former Ald. Arenda Troutman is expected to plead guilty this afternoon to taking bribes while she represented the 20th Ward on the South Side.
Troutman once adamantly denied taking part in bribe-taking in exchange for zoning preferences while she was alderman. But the FBI ran an undercover sting, recording Troutman while she allegedly engaged in illegal transactions.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
More UCLA Medical Center employees peeked at celebrities' records, state says
The L.A. Times reports:
Even after UCLA Medical Center warned employees that it was cracking down on unauthorized access to medical records, the privacy of a "well-known individual" was breached by two nurses and an emergency room technician who called up the patient's computerized records in mid-April, according to a critical state report released Monday.A future look at what socialized health care will look like.
The California Department of Public Health also found that nearly twice as many medical center employees as had previously been reported peeked at confidential medical records at UCLA. Nearly 60 additional employees gained improper access to records between January 2004 and June 2006, the report said, bringing the total number of workers implicated in the growing scandal to 127.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Pension boost OK'd for Mass.state workers
The Boston Globe reports:
Massachusetts lawmakers, moving quickly and without debate in the final hours of the legislative session, approved a pension increase for state workers that could cost more than $3 billion over the next 20 years, sparking criticism from fiscal watchdogs who say the state cannot afford such a costly benefit.
The bill, which was strongly backed by unions in the midst of an election year, would increase the annual cost-of-living adjustments by about $120 per year for retired teachers and state employees, helping them afford the spiraling cost of fuel and food, supporters say. But because the number of eligible retirees is so vast - about 100,000 would receive the benefit - the cost could reach $2.7 billion to $3.5 billion by 2026, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-backed fiscal watchdog group.
"There is no money to pay for this enhanced benefit, regardless of the merits," Michael J. Widmer, the foundation's president, said yesterday. "It's another example of the administration and the Legislature passing a benefit and simply passing the buck to a future taxpayer. . . . it's the height of irresponsibility."
The initiative comes at a time when state leaders are struggling to find a way to fix dilapidated bridges, pay for the rising costs of the state's healthcare law, and provide property tax relief to cities and towns that have been forced to layoff workers and slash budgets. A previous version of the bill would have been even costlier, requiring municipalities to offer the same benefit to their retirees. Legislators dropped that portion after an outcry from local leaders.
The boost for state retirees also comes at a time when cost-of-living increases are almost unheard of for pensions in the private sector - and private pensions themselves are becoming, in some ways, a thing of the past.
Governor Deval Patrick has signaled his support and said in a statement released yesterday: "At a time when fuel and energy costs are on the rise, even a limited increase will help retirees living on a fixed income."
Friday, August 1, 2008
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