Free Republic

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Sunday classified Democratic efforts in the Wisconsin recall election as a “test run” for the presidential race. “It’s given the Obama for America operation an opportunity to do the dry run we need of our massive, significant dynamic grassroots presidential campaign,” the Florida representative said of the battleground state on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

MADISON, Wis. -- State unions were dealt a setback Friday when a federal judge said they would have to get their members to opt in, rather than opt out, to having the state deduct union dues from their paychecks. What's more, the judge did not rule on dues deductions for unions that he earlier found the state improperly decertified. The state's largest unions were decertified, and the ruling -- at least for now -- will make it harder for them to get money from dues. But U.S. District Court Judge William Conley gave unions one beneficial ruling by saying that...

Wisconsin's recall election is on, pitting Gov. Scott Walker against Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. If Mr. Walker is voted out of office on June 5, what other politician will be willing to step forward to address America's entitlement challenges? Mr. Walker's record is well known: He limited collective bargaining for government labor unions and trimmed health-insurance and pension benefits, bringing them more in line with private business. Organized labor thinks Mr. Walker's reforms should be the end of his career. They argue, first, that public workers just wanted to "have a voice" in their employment. But public-school teachers are more...

Congressional staffers owed about $10.6 million in unpaid taxes in 2010, a slight increase from the previous year and a growing slice of the roughly $1 billion owed by federal and postal workers nationwide. The figures come as Republican efforts to pass legislation allowing federal agencies to fire tax delinquent federal employees have slowed and as the White House continues to crack down on improper payments made by agencies to delinquent government contractors and federal beneficiaries. About 98,000 federal, postal and congressional employees owed $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes at the end of fiscal 2010, according to records provided by...

Madison - The state medical school disciplined 20 doctors and fined 11 of them up to $4,000 for handing out sick notes to demonstrators at last year's labor protests, newly released records show. The records, requested by the Journal Sentinel last year under the state's open records law, show for the first time the extent of the discipline given to those doctors by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. In several cases, doctors in more senior positions within the school also had to step away from those roles for a period of four months over one...

16 Cities Likely to Declare Bankruptcy Posted @ 1/12/2011 5:30 AM By Money Tree Posted in [Budget & Spending] | 2 Comments Will 2011 be the year of municipal default? Here is a list of 16 cities likely to face bankruptcy, as reported by Business Insider. San Diego, Ca. Deficit through June 2012 : $73 million Budget in FY2011: $2.85 billion Annualized gap: 1.7% The city's official have tried curbing the deficit by increasing sales taxes, but residents of the city strongly oppose this and have voted it down. San Diego already cut over $200 million over the past two...

A switchboard operator has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against the local American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, alleging violations of labor laws. Rebecca Holt, who works for Regions Hospital in St. Paul, filed the complaint filed the charges with the NLRB Region 18 office in Minneapolis claiming that she was threatened ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- A former school superintendent under fire for his $1 million retirement payout is claiming Wayne Township Schools owe him even more money. In a counterclaim filed by his attorneys Wednesday, Terry Thompson said the district breached his 2007 employment contract by prematurely ending his superintendent emeritus consulting job on Jan. 31, 2011, once Call 6 Investigator Kara Kenney broke the news of the payout. Thompson claims the district still owes him for unpaid salary, post-retirement contributions, deferred compensation and severance pay, but the claim does not give an exact dollar figure.

A Las Vegas attorney will launch a legal and political effort this week aimed at establishing and funding a parallel state budget, beyond the reach of the Legislature and governor. Kermitt Waters seeks to place on the November ballot a proposed constitutional amendment calling for a sweeping overhaul of Nevada’s tax system — abolishing property taxes on single-family homes among other things while identifying and allocating new tax revenue. Waters said last week his proposal is borne of frustration with the status quo in Carson City. The state’s 63 lawmakers represent the powerful interests who fund their campaigns, he said,...

Mitt Romney is a loser...an election loser. In his 1994 senatorial campaign, he lost by a huge margin (by more than 17 points) in a year when Republicans took over Congress. Despite everyone else’s success, Romney managed to lose. Of all his campaigns he has won only once when he won a single term as governor of Massachusetts, but he quickly tarnished that close victory. After becoming governor in 2002 with Kerry Healey as his running mate, Romney proceeded to mismanage his position so that his approval dropped rapidly into the 40's and then the 30's. He left that mess...

A few snippets of state worker news worth watching: • Three ballot measures drawing fire from public labor unions can begin collecting signatures, aiming to make a 2012 ballot. The initiatives would end public employee collective bargaining, tax six-figure CalPERS and CalSTRS pensions up to 25 percent and raise the minimum retirement age for members of those retirement systems to 65 (or 58 for sworn public safety officers). Labor teed off after the secretary of state's Wednesday announcement the measures could circulate. "These extremist attempts at undermining retirement security for millions of Californians are dead on arrival," said Steve Maviglio...

A city sewer worker made more last year than the police commissioner, the schools chancellor and the mayor - combined. Senior engineer Gerald Mistretta's pay was $771,841 - and six of his co-workers raked in nearly as much - thanks to a wage settlement with the city. His bottom line for the fiscal year that ended in June included a base salary of $109,850 a year, $173,000 in overtime - and nearly half a million dollars in back pay. The Brooklyn father of three said the one-shot windfall - which made him the top earner among city employees last year...

Maybe it's your brother-in-law, who has a new Mercedes and likes to quip that only fools pay all their taxes. Or else a contractor who overcharged for a home renovation and then demanded you make the check payable to "cash." The agency has two whistleblower programs... the reward can go as high as 30%.

California, like other Western states, was not fertile ground for labor union organization during the early 20th century, with Southern California employers being particularly hostile, even violently so, to union activity. As manufacturing took hold in the state during and immediately after World War II, however, union membership boomed, particularly in the defense industry, topping out at about 40 percent of the state's workers in the 1950s. The decline of manufacturing in the 1960s and 1970s hit unions hard, but they found a savior in Jerry Brown, who was elected governor in 1974. He signed long-sought collective bargaining legislation for...

The state has warned nearly 3,300 California state workers this year that their positions may disappear as the government grinds through a slow-motion layoff process that aims to shrink government over the next few years. The notices, overwhelmingly concentrated in the Sacramento area so far, represent the initial wave of warnings that eventually will lead to several thousand state jobs lost. Of the State Restriction of Appointment notices issued, 2,024 went to employees working in Sacramento County. Los Angeles County accounted for the next-highest number of potential layoffs with 800 notices going to workers there. More are coming. Many departments...

The two-day-a-month unpaid furloughs of state executive branch workers ordered in 2008 by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger legally applied to employees of California's elected constitutional officers, an appellate court in Sacramento ruled Tuesday. Applying the furlough order to the staffs of constitutional officers "does not violate the California Constitution's system of divided executive authority or impermissibly interfere with (the officers') statutory right to control the staffing and management of their respective offices," a three-justice panel of the 3rd District Court of Appeal declared in a 47-page opinion. Schwarzenegger resorted to furloughs as a cost-saving device in the face of an overwhelming...

California's state and local governments employed more than two million full- and part-time workers in 2010, and they were paid about $10 billion a month, a new data dump from the Census Bureau shows. The California data were gleaned from the Census Bureau's annual census of government employment, taken in March 2010, and indicate that state and local governments are, collectively, one of the largest segments of the state's $2 trillion per year economy. California's 2.16 million government employees translate into 1.79 million "full-time equivalent" workers, and the $9.7 billion paid to them in March 2010 translates into an average...

First, the good news for state workers: Next month about 25,000 of you return to steady full hours and full pay for the first time in 31 months. Now the bad: Layoffs are coming – the real kind, where real people go to the unemployment line. Roughly 200,000 state workers have been without full wages and work since former GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature started twice-monthly furloughs in February 2009. Then they added a third day a few months later. One unpaid day equals about a 5 percent pay cut. Last summer four unions representing those 25,000 operating...

An editorial in The Detroit News today calls on the state government’s employees to come to the bargaining table to offer concessions. It cites an analysis from University of Michigan economist Don Grimes that showed public-sector compensation increasing from $43,450 to $62,237 in the past decade, much higher than private-sector growth. But the state government compensation imbalance is worse than this. The numbers between the two groups are disparate because Grimes uses compensation from all state government employment — all workers at state universities would be included, for instance, instead of just the 50,000 people that get their paychecks direct...

Most Orland firefighters made more than $100,000 in 2010 Overtime added nearly $2 million to $21 million payroll By Andy Grimm and Steve Schmadeke, Tribune reporters July 20, 2011 The leaders of the Orland Fire Protection District say they're the best fire department in the state. At a minimum, they are probably among the best-paid, figures released Tuesday show. Of the 108 firefighters, lieutenants and engineers on the southwest suburban department's payroll last year, 79 were paid more than $100,000, according to salary data provided by new fire district board President James Hickey. Those paychecks were pumped up by overtime...