Posted on 09/13/2007 11:03:12 AM PDT by SmithL
If you want to know what it means to accept $415,000 from the prison guards union, consider the sorry spectacle of Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City, carrying soiled water as a legislative lackey in the middle of the night.
After leaders of the prison guards union circulated several versions of draft amendments, Garcia agreed to author a bill that would give the union a pay raise. The backdoor tactic showed a desperate union, unwilling or unable to work through the normal bargaining process with the state -- and unwilling or unable to work within the normal legislative process. It also showed Garcia in effect being led around by a ring in her nose in the waning hours of the session.
At around 2 a.m., after 29 of 40 senators decided to consider amendments that would give prison guards a 6.1 percent pay raise, an ad hoc Senate Appropriations Committee hearing convened. Garcia attempted to present her bill. It didn't take long for senators to realize that her version was different from the one they had and different from the versions that the committee and the Department of Finance had used to make their analyses. It was an embarrassing mess, even by the messy standards of a legislative session's waning hours.
The committee recessed. The union said it wanted to withdraw the bill from consideration. The committee returned. On the Senate floor, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata gaveled the end of the legislative session for the year as Garcia was telling the Appropriations Committee that she was pulling the bill and would have to come back with it in January.
The union effort to circumvent the bargaining process failed, but only barely. Twenty-nine senators were willing...
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
I’m not excusing Garcia (R), but I wonder how many Democrats (D) were involved in this effort? Odd that the SacBee only mentions a Republican, and seems anxious to blame the whole thing on her.
Who were the other 18?
I mean 28. Sorry.
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