As I’ve previously mentioned several times, Controller Chiang decided to put his public employee union bosses, from whom he has raked in plenty of campaign dough, ahead of taxpayers when he refused to implement the Governor’s Executive Order during the last budget impasse. While the state was facing an huge financial shortfall and the Governor was taking executive action to cut costs by reducing the pay of state employees to minimum wage, Chiang refused to implement the order and cited that his computers weren’t up to speed with what was required from a 5-year old court ruling.
Yesterday, Judge Timothy M. Frawley has tentatively sided with Schwarzenegger based on a 2003 case, White v. Davis, that ruled that state workers aren’t authorized their full pay until the money is appropriated in the state budget. Since tentative rulings are rarely overturned, we can expect that the Judge will take this stance again on Friday in his final ruling. This sets a great precedent for the ability of this Governor or future Governors to responsibly cut costs in a common sense way during budget impasses. And now let’s hope that the Controller actually obeys the court and upgrades his computer system so he’s got no more flimsy excuses.
Credit the Governor and his legal team for following through on their promise to take this to the courts even after a budget passed. This is in fact a victory for taxpayers and the rule of law. In fact, it ensures that future Controllers think twice before trying to disobey fiscally responsible orders given down by the Governor.
We’ll end this post with a little FlashReport prediction (which isn’t too far-fetched) — this Governor is going to have an opportunity to utilize this now court-approved fiscal tool before his term is up — because despite the passage of the Big 5/Big Taxes/Open Primary budget, we will be back in the quagmire soon enough. Not only did that budget not undo the systemic problems in state government, but it relies on the passage of ballot measures, the passage of which is certainly not assured…
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