Now, after Local 1000 recently reached impasse with 135 of its administrative and support staff represented by United Auto Workers Local 2350, the last offer put on the table is going out for a vote. The deal offers a modest raise but rolls back retiree health benefits. Members have rejected similar agreements before.
L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines convened the panel in response to critics who said the district could not afford its recent contract agreements with employee unions. These critics included Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly, who helped to oversee the work of the fiscal committee.
Currently, California voters must approve public-works projects that are funded through general-obligation bonds paid from the general fund. These are taxpayer dollars, so the thinking is taxpayers ought to approve these outlays. This initiative would also require voter approval for projects larger than $2 billion that are financed through “revenue bonds.”
Educational bureaucrats are very prone to writing documents in “edu-speak,” a jargon for insiders. The “multiple measures” plan now being drafted is a monument to such deliberate obfuscation.
Auditors found the agency’s projects to be over budget a whopping 62 percent of the time. Caltrans spends three times the national average on its per-mile road spending, making California one of the least-efficient users of existing tax dollars. Meanwhile, the state’s infrastructure is crumbling.
A proposed state budget overhaul reducing some income taxes in favor of a new tax on services failed to gain traction this year, but will be back on the table in 2016, the plan’s sponsor told the Orange County Taxpayers Association on Wednesday.
Like hoarders, various groups find contentment in the classification mess they helped create. Unions and governors (including Brown) bargained new classifications as pay raises by another name. Departments added classifications over the years to control their own hiring. Sometimes state law adds new classifications.
However, a Times analysis of project documents, as well as interviews with scientists, engineers and construction experts, indicates that the deadline and budget targets will almost certainly be missed — and that the state has underestimated the challenges ahead, particularly completing the tunneling on time.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System will discuss a plan Tuesday that is expected to increase the already fast-rising amounts that taxpayers contribute for government retirements.
David Miller, the president of the scientists’ union, notes that annual raises last year to his members’ managers averaged $42,000 to comply with a like-pay for like-work court ruling. Rank-and-file scientists thought they’d be next. The bargained agreement didn’t come close.
Sixteen years after it abetted one of the most irresponsible political acts in state history – a massive increase in public pension benefits – the California Public Employees’ Retirement System may finally be reforming.
Businesses that might bid to build a high-speed rail network across California are questioning whether there will be enough government funding to complete the complex and ambitious project.
Schools have added translators and other help for parents, tutoring and alternatives to discipline, a sampling of Bay Area schools shows — but many also are investing in buildings, trying to divert funds to teacher salaries and ignoring their poorest students.
Tragically, in other words, the efforts devoted to raising the academic achievement of low-income children went for naught. Other factors, such as poverty and familial and peer influences, prevailed.
“California’s ratio of debt service to General Fund revenues was 6.84 percent in 2014-15. . . The STO estimates this ratio will be 6.79 percent in 2015-16.”
