Check this out. The governor and the controller on opposite sides in the court and the governor wins. The controller sides with unions and vows to fight on after the appeals court agrees with the governor.
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/03/2866778/court-sides-with-schwarzenegger.html
Court sides with Schwarzenegger on wage law, but Chiang, unions will fight on
jortiz@sacbee.com
Published Saturday, Jul. 03, 2010
The decision is in. The fight isn't over.
Sacramento's 3rd District Court of Appeal on Friday upheld a 17-month-old ruling allowing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to order state workers' pay reduced to minimum wage in the absence of a budget.
Although the state is now three days into the new fiscal year with no budget and the governor has instructed more than 200,000 government employees' pay lowered to the federal minimum, the ultimate impact of the court decision is far from clear.
State Controller John Chiang, the Democrat who lost the appeal, said Friday that he still has legal room to maneuver. State employee unions also are signaling they're ready to file their own lawsuits. The legal wrangling could push back indefinitely when state workers' pay might be withheld.
Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has said the law demands state workers' pay be withheld – a position that unions have interpreted as a threat, even as they have come to the bargaining table.
On Friday, the administration connected the court decision and the stalled budget talks. Republicans and Democrats are at odds over how to close the state's $19 billion deficit.
"This underscores the fact that everyone loses when we have a budget impasse," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear.
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, blasted the governor for "messing with people's lives" to gain leverage.
"He's trying to gain a tactical advantage in contract negotiations and on the budget," Steinberg said. "I think he's trying to put pressure on the unions that haven't yet finished contract negotiations and on the Democrats."
The governor wants the Democrats to agree to deep budget cuts without raising taxes, but Steinberg said his party will not "be dissuaded from negotiating a budget that is fair and that does not continue to disinvest in California."
Like Steinberg, GOP Assemblyman Roger Niello of Fair Oaks has plenty of state workers in his district. But Friday's court decision, he said, "wouldn't put pressure on me to make a poor budget decision. It would put pressure on me to do everything I had to do to see that we have a budget as soon as possible."
But raising taxes remains one of the "fundamental issues I'm not going to compromise on," said Niello, who voted for tax increases last year.
The governor's Department of Personnel Administration on Thursday sent minimum-wage pay instructions to the controller, triggered by lawmakers' failure to enact a budget before Thursday's start of the 2010-11 fiscal year.
With no budget in place that appropriates money for wages, the state Supreme Court has said the government must withhold what it pays employees to the least amount allowed by federal standards, $7.25 per hour for most of the state's 240,000 workers.
The withheld money must be issued once legislators and the governor agree on a budget with a payroll appropriation.
Schwarzenegger sent similar pay instructions to Chiang during a 2008 budget impasse. The controller refused for several reasons, including concerns that the state's payroll technology and accounting methods make it impossible to comply without breaking federal labor law.
He repeated those assertions in a Friday press statement: "This is not a simple software problem. Reducing pay and then restoring it in a timely manner once a budget is enacted cannot be done without gross violations of law unless and until the State completes its overhaul of the state payroll system and payroll laws are changed."
Schwarzenegger sued Chiang in Sacramento Superior Court and won. The controller then appealed to the 3rd District Court.
Chiang couldn't just refuse to comply with the law or the administration's instructions, the appellate court's three-judge panel said in a unanimous ruling.
Justices Vance Raye, Arthur Scotland and Rick Sims concluded that if Chiang had concerns that withholding pay would put the state in legal peril, he should have taken it to court.
The controller said he'll do just that: "I will move quickly to ask the courts to definitively resolve the issue of whether our current payroll system is capable of complying with the minimum-wage order in a way that protects taxpayers from billions of dollars in fines and penalties."
While Chiang continues that battle, state employee unions are also gearing up their legal machinery to fight the new minimum-wage order.
"If (Schwarzenegger) tries to cut everybody's pay to minimum wage, there probably would be a number of legal challenges," said Bruce Blanning, executive director of the Professional Engineers in California Government. "Our view is that when people do their job, they should get paid."
The threat of minimum wage has prodded several unions into contract talks with Schwarzenegger. Last month, six unions – representing doctors, Highway Patrol officers, firefighters and psychiatric technicians, equipment operators, and health and social service professionals – tentatively agreed to pacts lowering retirement benefits for new state hires and increasing what all their members will pay into their pensions.
Reducing the state's cost for pension benefits has been a policy centerpiece for Schwarzenegger. In exchange for those concessions, he promised the six unions that they would be shielded from minimum wage.
Schwarzenegger's Thursday pay instructions exempt the 37,000 employees covered by those tentative deals. To avoid minimum wage, however, two-thirds of the Senate and the Assembly would to pass legislation appropriating money specifically for that payroll.
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
Share
Buzz up!
Call Jon Ortiz, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1043.
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/03/2866778/court-sides-with-schwarzenegger.html
Court sides with Schwarzenegger on wage law, but Chiang, unions will fight on
jortiz@sacbee.com
Published Saturday, Jul. 03, 2010
The decision is in. The fight isn't over.
Sacramento's 3rd District Court of Appeal on Friday upheld a 17-month-old ruling allowing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to order state workers' pay reduced to minimum wage in the absence of a budget.
Although the state is now three days into the new fiscal year with no budget and the governor has instructed more than 200,000 government employees' pay lowered to the federal minimum, the ultimate impact of the court decision is far from clear.
State Controller John Chiang, the Democrat who lost the appeal, said Friday that he still has legal room to maneuver. State employee unions also are signaling they're ready to file their own lawsuits. The legal wrangling could push back indefinitely when state workers' pay might be withheld.
Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has said the law demands state workers' pay be withheld – a position that unions have interpreted as a threat, even as they have come to the bargaining table.
On Friday, the administration connected the court decision and the stalled budget talks. Republicans and Democrats are at odds over how to close the state's $19 billion deficit.
"This underscores the fact that everyone loses when we have a budget impasse," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear.
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, blasted the governor for "messing with people's lives" to gain leverage.
"He's trying to gain a tactical advantage in contract negotiations and on the budget," Steinberg said. "I think he's trying to put pressure on the unions that haven't yet finished contract negotiations and on the Democrats."
The governor wants the Democrats to agree to deep budget cuts without raising taxes, but Steinberg said his party will not "be dissuaded from negotiating a budget that is fair and that does not continue to disinvest in California."
Like Steinberg, GOP Assemblyman Roger Niello of Fair Oaks has plenty of state workers in his district. But Friday's court decision, he said, "wouldn't put pressure on me to make a poor budget decision. It would put pressure on me to do everything I had to do to see that we have a budget as soon as possible."
But raising taxes remains one of the "fundamental issues I'm not going to compromise on," said Niello, who voted for tax increases last year.
The governor's Department of Personnel Administration on Thursday sent minimum-wage pay instructions to the controller, triggered by lawmakers' failure to enact a budget before Thursday's start of the 2010-11 fiscal year.
With no budget in place that appropriates money for wages, the state Supreme Court has said the government must withhold what it pays employees to the least amount allowed by federal standards, $7.25 per hour for most of the state's 240,000 workers.
The withheld money must be issued once legislators and the governor agree on a budget with a payroll appropriation.
Schwarzenegger sent similar pay instructions to Chiang during a 2008 budget impasse. The controller refused for several reasons, including concerns that the state's payroll technology and accounting methods make it impossible to comply without breaking federal labor law.
He repeated those assertions in a Friday press statement: "This is not a simple software problem. Reducing pay and then restoring it in a timely manner once a budget is enacted cannot be done without gross violations of law unless and until the State completes its overhaul of the state payroll system and payroll laws are changed."
Schwarzenegger sued Chiang in Sacramento Superior Court and won. The controller then appealed to the 3rd District Court.
Chiang couldn't just refuse to comply with the law or the administration's instructions, the appellate court's three-judge panel said in a unanimous ruling.
Justices Vance Raye, Arthur Scotland and Rick Sims concluded that if Chiang had concerns that withholding pay would put the state in legal peril, he should have taken it to court.
The controller said he'll do just that: "I will move quickly to ask the courts to definitively resolve the issue of whether our current payroll system is capable of complying with the minimum-wage order in a way that protects taxpayers from billions of dollars in fines and penalties."
While Chiang continues that battle, state employee unions are also gearing up their legal machinery to fight the new minimum-wage order.
"If (Schwarzenegger) tries to cut everybody's pay to minimum wage, there probably would be a number of legal challenges," said Bruce Blanning, executive director of the Professional Engineers in California Government. "Our view is that when people do their job, they should get paid."
The threat of minimum wage has prodded several unions into contract talks with Schwarzenegger. Last month, six unions – representing doctors, Highway Patrol officers, firefighters and psychiatric technicians, equipment operators, and health and social service professionals – tentatively agreed to pacts lowering retirement benefits for new state hires and increasing what all their members will pay into their pensions.
Reducing the state's cost for pension benefits has been a policy centerpiece for Schwarzenegger. In exchange for those concessions, he promised the six unions that they would be shielded from minimum wage.
Schwarzenegger's Thursday pay instructions exempt the 37,000 employees covered by those tentative deals. To avoid minimum wage, however, two-thirds of the Senate and the Assembly would to pass legislation appropriating money specifically for that payroll.
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
Share
Buzz up!
Call Jon Ortiz, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1043.
No comments:
Post a Comment