Free Republic

HONG KONG—For months now, I’ve been told that Hong Kong’s protests would end soon. They’ll end when school starts, I heard during the summer. School did start, but the protests wore on, only now I saw high-school students in crisp school uniforms joining the protesters’ ranks. Next, the mask ban of early October was supposed to slow protesters down, but the very first day after that ban, I watched streams of protesters in masks and helmets make their way to their usual haunts on Hong Kong Island. The government shut down many of the subway lines that day, a practice...

The California Democratic Party decided not to endorse in the U.S. Senate contest on Saturday, an embarrassing rebuke of veteran Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein, who has represented California in the Senate for a quarter-century, is facing an insurgent bid by a fellow Democrat, state Senate leader Kevin de León. He earned nearly 500 more votes than the senator, who was first elected in 1992. De León has cultivated relationships with the party’s delegates. He still faces a significant challenge in trying to topple Feinstein, who trounces De León in all public polling and fund-raising. The party also did not endorse...

A Sacramento Superior Court judge has tentatively ruled that the state controller has no authority to judge whether the state budget is balanced or block lawmakers' pay as he did last June. In a bitter feud during last year's budget battle, Controller John Chiang determined that the budget passed by legislative Democrats was not balanced. Using new powers he believed he had under voter-approved Proposition 25, Chiang then blocked lawmakers' pay and expense money for 12 days until they cut a budget deal with Gov. Jerry Brown. In a tentative ruling today, Judge David I. Brown said that the controller...

Democratic legislative leaders sued Controller John Chiang today for blocking their pay during last year's budget dispute, a decision that drew scorn from lawmakers last summer. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez said the Democratic controller overstepped his bounds when he decided that lawmakers sent Gov. Jerry Brown a flawed budget last June and docked their pay. They said they are not suing for back earnings, but to ask the court whether Chiang can intervene this year if lawmakers face another budget dispute with Brown at the June 15 deadline. The lawmakers filed in...

The chief executives of CalPERS and CalSTRS along with Controller John Chiang and Treasurer Bill Lockyer are asking the Brown administration to overhaul the state's travel meal reimbursement rates to help accommodate for trips to expensive locales. Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/the_state_worker/2011/08/california-officials-seek-higher-rates-meal-reimbursements.html#ixzz1U6X38OST

So much for the will of the people. Remember Prop 25? (Voters approved Pro 25: No budget – no pay for lawmakers.) And remember how pleased some folks where when State Controller John Chiang said he was ‘not’ going to pay lawmakers because the budget wasn’t signed and wasn't balanced? Oh.. well.. forget about all that. Lawmakers complained and so, now John Chiang’s office says basically .. Hey.. all’s well that ends well. And he’s now restoring their lost pay..

NEW: But — It’s Still a Phony Budget: The SacBee provided details of some of the changes that supposedly “balance” the budget. One is “$200 million Amazon online tax enforcement.” They actually think they can heist this money even though Amazon has promised it will fire the “affiliates” — some 20,000 small Mom and Pop outfits — that would be taxed. The tax would only affect those who use Amazon’s sales engine, not buy directly from Amazon itself (direct sales are ruled by federal law which isn’t changing). But there were no reforms in the Brown/Democrat budget — no spending...

Sir Walter Scott wasn't writing about politics when he sagely observed two centuries ago, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." But he could have been – and his poetry perfectly describes the ironic consequences of two deceptive California ballot measures drafted by Democratic politicians and their allies. Last week, state Controller John Chiang invoked the intertwined provisions of the two measures, 2004's Proposition 58 and last year's Proposition 25, to cut off salaries and expense payments of state legislators because they failed to pass a balanced budget by the June 15 constitutional deadline....

California's state workforce is so vast and diverse that a journalist can quickly get into trouble making blanket assertions about it.But not this time.State employees love it, love it, LOVE IT that Controller John Chiang decided a new voter-adopted law prevents him from paying legislators because they missed the June 15 deadline to pass a balanced budget. For the last few years, delayed budgets fired up talk about whether state workers would be paid full wages on time.In 2008 and again last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to hold their pay to the federal minimum wage while deadlocked budget talks...

Controller John Chiang has blocked pay for lawmakers, putting state budget negotiations into uncharted territory and upping the pressure on legislative leaders to strike a deal. Chiang rejected his own party's spending plan as insufficient to satisfy a voter-approved law requiring timely budgets. In doing so, the Democratic controller exercised unprecedented authority Tuesday, establishing a new role for his office under propositions 25 and 58 to determine whether a legislative budget is balanced. "I think it was pretty clear ... that (voters) wanted a balanced budget," Chiang said Tuesday in an interview. With a $9.6 billion deficit still lingering, lawmakers...

The budget passed by the Legislature on June 15 was incomplete and unbalanced and lawmakers will not receive any pay until they approve a balanced pending plan, Controller John Chiang announced today. The controller's decision has been highly anticipated at the Capitol since Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a budget plan passed by only Democrats on a majority vote. Chiang found that the budget authorized $89.75 billion in spending, but revenues totaled only $87.9 billion, leaving an imbalance of $1.85 billion. "My office's careful review of the recently-passed budget found components that were miscalculated, miscounted or unfinished," Chiang said. "The numbers...

Controller John Chiang, who battled former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on state worker pay, is in the middle of another wage fight.The Democrat could decide as soon as today whether to pay legislators their salary and living expenses dating back to Thursday. Under a new voter-approved law, Proposition 25, the state docks legislative pay each day lawmakers have not sent the governor a budget.We answer some common questions below: >Lawmakers passed a budget last week. What gives?Chiang determined that lawmakers must not only send the governor a budget, but a "balanced" one, as required by a separate 2004 voter-approved law. The...

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association demanded Friday that Controller John Chiang withhold pay from lawmakers and threatened to sue if he does not. The group's president, Jon Coupal, contends that lawmakers must pass a balanced budget to receive pay under voter-approved Proposition 25. He referred to a veto letter in which Gov. Jerry Brown said the Democrats' majority-vote budget was "not a balanced solution" and "not financeable." "If you pay legislators for enacting a phony budget, then you have made Proposition 25's provision prohibiting pay meaningless," Coupal wrote. "We urge you to confirm your intent to withhold pay and force...

Nobody knows if lawmakers are receiving pay today. State Controller John Chiang said this afternoon he must still analyze the budget bills to determine whether lawmakers met the voter-approved requirement to pass a budget by June 15 to get paid. "I will move quickly to complete our analysis of whether the budget bills passed Wednesday meet the constitutional definition, or fall short, which would require my office to forfeit their pay under Proposition 25," Chiang said. ...Chiang made a forceful statement earlier this month that lawmakers must not only send the governor a budget on time, but one that is...

Gov. Jerry Brown is still trying to close a bipartisan deal with Republicans to place taxes on the ballot and erase a remaining $9.6 billion deficit, but time is running out.State lawmakers are staring at a Wednesday constitutional deadline to pass the budget. The full Senate is scheduled to debate today without a handshake deal in place.We answer some common questions below: Why does Brown need Republican votes? Didn't we pass a measure allowing the majority party to approve the budget?A two-thirds vote is still required to approve taxes, place taxes on the ballot and take money from redevelopment. Brown's...

Sacramento -- California lawmakers will have to go without a paycheck after June 15 if they do not pass a balanced budget within the next two weeks, state Controller John Chiang announced today. The announcement follows questions over whether a budget bill approved in March would satisfy the state's constitutional requirement that the Legislature pass a balanced budget by June 15. That bill did not solve the state's entire budget deficit, though it is technically the official budget bill for the 2011-12 fiscal year that begins July 1. California lawmakers routinely fail to pass a balanced budget on time, but...

Attorneys for the Schwarzenegger administration on Tuesday filed a brief in Sacramento Superior Court that argues state employee unions shouldn't be allowed to enter the minimum wage fight between the governor and State Controller John Chiang. As reported here, California Association of Professional Scientists and Professional Engineers in California Government on Monday filed a motion to be a party in the minimum wage litigation flying back and forth the last week or so. SEIU Local 1000 and CCPOA have done the same. All the unions are siding with Chiang. A hearing is set for Friday at 11 a.m. The administration's...

The Schwarzenegger administration today ordered State Controller John Chiang to reduce state worker pay for July to the federal minimum allowed by law -- $7.25 an hour for most state workers. The instructions from the Department of Personnel Administration exclude roughly 37,000 state workers in six bargaining units that recently came to tentative labor agreements with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to cut the pay of state workers to minimum wage if a timely budget accord is not reached, according to a memo sent Wednesday from the director of the governor's Department of Personnel Administration to state agency and department heads. The memo, written by DPA director Debbie Endsley, also warned that Schwarzenegger could order more controversial furloughs, even though the state's final scheduled furlough day for tens of thousands of employees was last Friday. "The Governor retains the right and authority to order furloughs if necessary to address a fiscal and cash crisis," Endsley wrote. The...

GOV. Arnold Schwarzenegger said "something very special happened" in his third year in office. "We found the groove," he proclaimed during an interview with our editorial board last week. And Sacramento has been grooving with him. The just-completed legislative session represented one of the most productive in recent memory. The Republican governor and Democratic legislators worked together on essential long-term goals (upgrade our transportation systems and schools, help stop global warming) and short-term imperatives (raise the minimum wage, reform foster care, secure drug discounts for the uninsured) that will have an impact on Californians' lives. (snip) We have disagreed with...