First off, no personal attack was intended, just a personal venting on my part.
Second off, I know I have been working for the government too long. When I start seeing as a "perk" the temporary reversal of Governor Arnie's decision docking our pay down to minimum wage until the budget gets signed, you know you don't want your babies to grow up to be "cowPOORys".
I didn't take it as a personal attack, that's just how us LA barbarians "spoke" to people (just can't get over how many times the wrong tense of a word is used durring meeting with "the city").
I totally forgot to ask you about that budget thingy and how it was possibly affecting you. Last week I did some work that involved a state inspector and he chatted a little about this situation, it sounded like he wasn't worried about getting bumped down until the budget crisis was resolved.
What, me worry??? <duhhhhhhh!!!!>
We got a reprieve from the courts about reducing our August pay down to minimum wage, so we are okay for another month. However, I am attending a conference in D.C. in September. You know, the kind that is paid for by you taxpayers? While I need to get the logistics of the trip approved, such as the air, hotel room, and registration for the conference, unless a budget gets signed before the trip, I will be paying for it out-of-pocket. With no guarantee, at least quickly, of getting reimbursed for it any time soon.
Latest news is that a budget is not forthcoming any time soon.
If anybody you know still thinks term limits are a good thing, you might tell them the budget crisis we have every year is almost entirely caused by pork barrel politicians who need to get their individual agendas funded before leaving office, resulting in gridlock special interest sessions devoted to scores of separate issues, none of which is remotely associated with final budget decisions.
Plus, having to fund any projects resulting from the passage of costly propositions takes money directly out of the general fund, which is not flush, to say the least, to begin with. Prop 98 that guarantees a set amount of the budget each year has to go to education (and as I stated earlier, the education problems in California are NOT from a lack of money, but how it gets spent). By throwing this guarantee into the budget planning, it causes tremendous problems in poor revenue years, which we have had for five years running now.
But it shore do look good when one of these idiots suggests docking the state workers as punishment for the budget crisis, don't it? Pay raises in the last twenty years has mostly consisted of returning pay cuts made to our salaries from from previous years.
Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT allow anyone you know to even entertain the thought of working for the state in the future. The days of nice security and well paid jobs are gone. The medical options are a joke and cost us a fortune. The retirement plan for new workers is based on how educated individuals are now in how Wall Street works because it is up to them to figure out where they want to put aside money for this if they want anything to live on in forty years. And every year, plastered across the front pages, are politicians suggesting more be taken away from us to balance the budget.
