Sounds like a thoughtless move, more doing something drastic to get his way then doing something that's reasonable and is going to help.

You have to be competative for your market if you want decent people.

Man, everything coming from California about finances is bad bad news. What is the future looking like? Is there a plan or are they going to go bankrupt or something? I feel sorry for the govt employees there.

If the state controller won't comply just fire him. That's one less employee he'd have to pay 455/week

“We are a fiscal poster child for what not to do,” said Ralph Martire of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a liberal-leaning policy group in Illinois. “We make California look as if it’s run by penurious accountants who sit in rooms trying to put together an honest budget all day.”

Sounds like a thoughtless move, more doing something drastic to get his way then doing something that's reasonable and is going to help.

You have to be competative for your market if you want decent people.

I think there have been two years in the last two dozen when a budget has been in on time. The legislature is consistently late, and they argue about it for a couple of months past the due date regularly.

Yes, this is a tactic to force the strongly Democratic legislature to pass a budget acceptable to the minority Republicans, the Proposition 13 law requires a two-thirds majority to pass a budget or raise taxes - and the Democrats do not have a two-thirds majority of the legislative votes needed to do either.

So, the Governor hurts the people he can, the State employees, until he gets his way and the budget is passed. This time he wants the hurting to go on forever in his name - in the form of dictating contract reductions without collective bargaining, which he has refused to do until the last couple of weeks, and even then his team has gone in with a set of non-negotiable take-back only orders. There is to be no real negotiating, his way or the highway.

Reportedly, the Union team went in with many proposals to save the State money, and they are being tossed out with no discussion by the Governor's team, we don't see the Governor as playing by the rules.

I don't care how good his movies are, I won't be watching another one. The little man complex (he is about 5'8" in real life, wears platform cowboy boots on a regular basis) has left him with a deep need to win against the State employees. Right now our last best line of defense is the State Controller, bless him.

Oh, and all the empty rhetoric about needing pension reform - is pretty empty. The majority of those six figure retirements are going to people he appointed to jobs the great majority of us will never see. The paperwork I've seen shows the average state pension is less than 2k/month.

Unfortunately, Micheal, the state isn't in a position where a few drops of "saved money" make a bit of difference in a empty bucket with a hole in the bottom. The unions, and as an extension their members, put themselves in this situation by refusing to allow the problems to be addressed until they were too late. Now the whole house of cards is coming down. The tax payers aren't willing to pay you any more. I'm very sorry you find yourself in this situation. I consider you a friend. But regardless of your personal plight, this is an unfortunate necessity. Your union doesn't have the tax payers of California in it's best interests, and the tax payers know this.

Pay cuts, layoffs and the highest unemployment rates in decades have reignited a debate over the relative treatment of public and private workers. USA Today reported in March that federal workers earn substantially higher wages than private sector employees who work the same types of jobs.

White House budget chief Peter Orszag responded that these pay differences merely reflect the superior skills of federal workers, not government largess. Adjusting for education and experience, he said, federal workers make about the same salaries as private workers. Mr. Orszag also correctly pointed out that public and private job categories aren't directly comparable, so we shouldn't necessarily expect them to have the same pay.

Nevertheless, salaries are only one part of total compensation. Government employees may also receive more generous health and pension benefits than Americans working for private enterprise. So are federal employees overpaid? Data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS) suggest they are.

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Conducted for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the CPS is a long-running survey that couples earnings and employment information with detailed demographic characteristics of the survey population. At first glance, the CPS data show that the average hourly wage for a federal worker is about 48% higher than a private worker's. Yet because federal employees tend to be more educated and experienced than their private counterparts, as Mr. Orszag noted, one has to control for these skill differences. This reduces the public-private salary gap—but it does not eliminate it. The federal wage premium for workers who have the same education and experience stands at 24%, still a windfall for public employees.

Even using all the standard controls—including race and gender, full- or part-time work, firm size, marital status, region, residence in a city or suburb, and more—the federal wage premium does not disappear. It stubbornly hovers around 12%, meaning private employees must work 13½ months to earn what comparable federal workers make in 12.

Most academic studies dating back to the 1970s have found similar pay differences. In addition to the wage premium, federal workers enjoy more generous fringe benefits than do private workers. For instance, federal workers receive a defined benefit pension with benefit levels comparable to those from private 401(k) plans, except that federal workers contribute only 0.8% of pay and are not subject to any market risk. They also receive employer matches to the defined contribution Thrift Savings Plan that significantly exceed the typical private employer match.

If the overall generosity of federal benefits matches that of federal salaries (which seems quite likely), total compensation for federal workers may easily exceed $14,000 per year more than an otherwise similar private employee.

The pay premium is probably the main reason federal workers quit their jobs at a far lower rate than do private employees. At the beginning of 2010, federal workers were only about one-third as likely to leave their jobs (a ratio not much different than in 2006, before the recession), implying that no private employer could offer them better compensation.

Federal employment also carries significant nonfinancial benefits—in particular that layoffs and firings are much rarer. If you think these aspects of federal employment lack value, ask any private employee who is now looking for work. A federal pay premium is unfair both to private workers, who receive less than their government peers, and to taxpayers who must cover the difference. Given our 2.7 million-strong federal work force, the government effectively overbills Americans by almost $40 billion every year just on labor costs.

Worker compensation is hardly the largest driver of current and future federal deficits. The biggest threat comes from the rising entitlement benefits of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Nevertheless, if Washington demands "painful sacrifices" to make these programs solvent, as the slogan goes, it must first re-establish its credibility. Giving federal workers salaries, benefits and terms of employment comparable to those received by private workers would be a good start.

Unfortunately, Micheal, the state isn't in a position where a few drops of "saved money" make a bit of difference in a empty bucket with a hole in the bottom. The unions, and as an extension their members, put themselves in this situation by refusing to allow the problems to be addressed until they were too late. Now the whole house of cards is coming down. The tax payers aren't willing to pay you any more. I'm very sorry you find yourself in this situation. I consider you a friend. But regardless of your personal plight, this is an unfortunate necessity. Your union doesn't have the tax payers of California in it's best interests, and the tax payers know this.

It's too bad the the legislators felt no great need to pass a budget so that the state would have a budget from which to pay its employees.

It's too bad that the Governor is required by law to issue the order he did.

Color me surprised that the State Controller disagrees with the CA District Court, the CA Appellate Court and the CA Supreme Court rulings that the government can't pay folks when the government doesn't have any money.

I bet the unions that renegotiated their contracts are happy they did now. Those workers realized that CA's budget crisis isn't some myth or that the taxpayers (their employers) should find a way to pay their salaries when they don't have salaries of their own. I guess the 37,000 state workers who agreed to pension reforms, in order to save jobs and huge future budget deficits, is worth it when the payback is being paid something more than minimum wage.

In the private sector, if you get your pay cut because profits are down, your hours reduced because the company overextended itself or the company you work for goes bankrupt (as CA is), you take it; you don’t receive back pay once the economy rebounds and you don't get interest free loans until your pay comes back to where it was before.

If the state controller won't comply just fire him. That's one less employee he'd have to pay 455/week

It hasn't brought a budget in on time but once in the last 20 years. This is normal.

It's too bad that the Governor is required by law to issue the order he did.

He is not so required. He may do this. He tried to do it last year, the first Governor to try the minimum wage ploy, and the Controller blocked it.

Color me surprised that the State Controller disagrees with the CA District Court, the CA Appellate Court and the CA Supreme Court rulings that the government can't pay folks when the government doesn't have any money.

The rulings have gone both ways on several of the ploys to of various Governors with every one of those courts over the years. It is a crap shoot as far as which way they will rule.

I bet the unions that renegotiated their contracts are happy they did now. Those workers realized that CA's budget crisis isn't some myth or that the taxpayers (their employers) should find a way to pay their salaries when they don't have salaries of their own. I guess the 37,000 state workers who agreed to pension reforms, in order to save jobs and huge future budget deficits, is worth it when the payback is being paid something more than minimum wage.

As a matter of fact, no. The membership is divided and there is talk of lawsuits against the Unions that agreed to the contracts. it will come to naught, but to believe the membership of the various Unions is universally happy is mistaken.

In the private sector, if you get your pay cut because profits are down, your hours reduced because the company overextended itself or the company you work for goes bankrupt (as CA is), you take it; you don’t receive back pay once the economy rebounds and you don't get interest free loans until your pay comes back to where it was before.

And that, dear Vindicarre, was my life before I went to work for the State 22 years ago. For the last 18 months my hours have been reduced, and my pay cut by the percentage the hours have been reduced.

Uncharacteristically, your sting lacks its usual burn, are you feeling well?

Maybe that is the point Ror. He may not be able to fire employees as easily as he can push their wages to the point that they quit. After a month one counts the reduction in workforce and can continue closer to normal pay.