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SACRAMENTO – A Superior Court judge has ruled against the union representing state prison guards in a dispute over a long-standing practice of using leave time donated by its members to conduct union activities. Officials from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation filed a lawsuit last summer to enforce provisions of their labor agreement with the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. That contract caps how much time guards can donate to the union. Union leaders said the suit is just another effort by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to cripple the politically powerful union, which helped defeating the governor's ballot agenda...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A Superior Court judge has ruled against the union representing state prison guards in a dispute over a long-standing practice of using leave time donated by its members to conduct union activities. Officials from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation filed a lawsuit last summer to enforce provisions of their labor agreement with the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. That contract caps how much time guards can donate to the union. Union leaders said the suit is just another effort by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to cripple the politically powerful union, which helped defeating the governor's ballot...

One of the most difficult problems state officials face in trying to reform state government is the special privileges public-sector unions enjoy that enable them to halt reforms that they oppose. A good recent example came last week when an arbitrator ruled that members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association - the prison guards union - can essentially devote an unlimited amount of working hours to union business. The state Department of Personnel Administration has tried to limit the amount of time used by prison guards to do union business, under the clear terms of a 2001 contract. It's...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - State senators assailed a revised state prison guard contract as fatally flawed and said it would set a precedent preventing lawmakers from refusing to fund the pact in the future. Sen. Dede Alpert, D-San Diego, chairwoman of the special committee overseeing the contract, said Monday she couldn't support a fatally flawed deal that would steal power from lawmakers. She said lawmakers had already made terrible mistakes tying guard raises to pay hikes at the California Highway Patrol. "The Legislature bears much of the responsibility and has to accept that responsibility," she said in concluding the meeting. "But...

SACRAMENTO - In exchange for delayed raises worth $108 million to the cash-strapped state, prison guards received a virtual guarantee of no layoffs for two years and greater ability for supervisors to choose when and where they work. The non-salary changes to the contract of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association amount to only a few million dollars in the state's $103 billion budget. But at least one lawmaker contends that the revisions help guards -- already under scrutiny for wielding too much sway in the state's corrections system -- consolidate their power within prison walls. ``This was supposed to...

SACRAMENTO - California's 31,000 prison guards could be asked to defer raises over the next two years to help the state balance its budget, but would eventually receive a full pay increase under a deal being fine-tuned by state and union negotiators, legislative sources briefed on the deal said Tuesday. New details emerged from contentious talks at the prison guard union's West Sacramento headquarters as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger confirmed Mercury News reports that the state is close to a deal with the influential group. Although the proposal would save the state less than a third of what Schwarzenegger had sought,...

Pentagon possesses three disks of photos, one of which includes some brief video clips. Many of the photos are redundant, and some have little to do with Iraqi detainees but show sex between U.S. soldiers... Pentagon officials prevailed at least temporarily in their insistence that the administration not immediately release the images, which include the forced masturbation of a detainee...

Californians should be outraged. The state is cutting basic services and mortgaging its future by borrowing to cover budget shortfalls. At the same time, the prison system continues to be over budget year after year. And the Legislature continues to approve supplemental funds to cover cost overruns, no questions asked. Improved administration of the system is essential, but it alone can't fix this problem. The cost overruns are largely structural, the result of specific provisions in the prison guard contract that encourage unrestrained use of sick leave, the largest single driver of escalating overtime costs. The administrations of Govs. Pete...

<p>SACRAMENTO – The new chief of the nation's largest prison system says it will take years and wholesale ethics retraining to end a corrosive "code of silence" that she has experienced within the California Department of Corrections.</p> <p>Director Jeanne S. Woodford blamed the prison system's chronic overspending on unrealistic underfunding by the previous administration as costs soared to meet federal and state laws and the requirements of running an around-the-clock operation.</p>

<p>The California Legislature has leverage in getting the parties to renegotiate the five-year prison guard contract: the budget appropriations process.</p> <p>The Office of Legislative Counsel notes that under state law if the Legislature doesn't approve sufficient funding to implement contract provisions, the parties have to renegotiate the affected provisions.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO - During the past four years, California's troubled prison system hired 1,000 guards at a cost of up to $100 million and without permission from the Legislature, state finance officials revealed Wednesday.</p> <p>In fact, the non-partisan legislative analysts office told lawmakers that the Department of Corrections budget in recent years grew at a faster rate than the inmate population. Over the past decade, the budget has doubled, to about $6 billion, while the number of inmates jumped only about 20 percent, to roughly 160,000.</p>

PHOENIX (AP) -- Two state prison guards were taken hostage by inmates early Sunday, and negotiators were called in to try to defuse the situation. One inmate overpowered one of the guards shortly after 5 a.m. during breakfast preparations, then met up with another inmate in the prison yard and the two gained access to the officers' tower, said Jim Robideau, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Corrections. Two other officers were injured in a scuffle, but aside from the two hostages - one male and one female correctional officer - all other staff and inmates were accounted for,...

<p>As the celebratory atmosphere winds down in Sacramento following Arnold Schwarzenegger's inaugural, the stark realities of California's budget crisis will quickly take center stage. The scope of the problem facing our new governor is breathtaking. No adjective can adequately describe the budgetary hole dug by Gray Davis & Co.</p>

<p>THERE'S a bill on the governor's desk that could help reduce crime, improve the lives of thousands of kids and keep families from becoming homeless without costing the state a penny. Why hasn't Gov. Davis jumped to sign it?</p> <p>AB 1947 would go a long way toward ending the state's mean-spirited and counterproductive policy of denying welfare benefits and food stamps to parents convicted of drug crimes. This lifetime ban was included as an option in the 1996 federal welfare reform law, but most states rejected it as too draconian. California adopted it.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - The union representing most of California's prison guards has spent nearly more than $800,000 toward Gov. Gray Davis' re-election, before and after the governor approved a contract likely to bring union members a 37 percent raise over five years.</p>