When A Pay Cut, Is A Fake Pay Cut

California State Capitol building in Sacramento, January 2008 lit up for breast cancer awareness. After the vote to dispatch (reject) Propositions 1A-E by over a 60% margin on Tuesday, March 19, 2009 in a State mandated Special Election, the Capitol may just be pink with a hue of embarrassment. Image Credit: Media USA

When A Pay Cut, Is A Fake Pay Cut

This morning in Burbank, on the very day after the Special Election called to vote on Propositions that would increase taxes (again) for everyone, the board of the California Citizens Compensation Committee acted on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's wishes in a bigger way than anticipated. The Governor had been working on getting concessions in salary from the group(s) that represent the state elected officials and officers of about 10% ... he got 18%!

This may sound good ...

But the pay cuts the panel approved won't start to go into effect until December, 2010, because the California constitution prohibits state officer salaries from being cut in the middle of their terms.

The cut will drop the annual pay of a legislator from $116,208 to $95,291.

So, when is a pay cut a FAKE pay cut? When it does not take effect for about one and one-half years from the time the decision is made. There is plenty of time between now and December 2010 for this ruling to change, or be overturned!

This excerpted and edited from the Sacramento Bee -

Commission slashes state officials' pay
By Peter Hecht, Sacramento Bee - Wednesday, May. 20, 2009 - 10:55 am

Declaring that elected officials must share the pain of California's fiscal crisis, an independent commission voted today to impose an 18 percent pay cut for statewide elected officials and all members of the Legislature.

The California Citizens Compensation Committee, which sets salaries for state officers, earlier voted in favor of a more modest 10 percent pay cuts in an April 29 meeting in Sacramento. But the action couldn't stand because the seven-member board lacked the required four votes.

But today the commission voted 5-1 to make a deeper reduction in elected officials' salaries because of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's announced plans to lay off 5,000 state workers.

They also said they were influenced by voters' overwhelming approval of Proposition 1F - a ballot measure that will ban increases in lawmaker salaries - in any budget deficit year.
Reference Here>>

NO American citizen should allow the Federal Government to move in and take-over the States as they have the Banks and Automobile industry.

Look, on the Federal level, this is all about CONTROL - not help or assistance - and they do not care what it takes to allow them to do this. Take taxpayer money that THEY do not have to pay back, and print as much money they feel they will need (about one Trillion dollars to date) in order to pull off this PONZI scheme of central, and socialist CONTROL.

Don't let Washington D.C. bail out any state, especially one as large as California. The politicians in California should be allowed to fail or correct themselves here during this ... Carter's Second Term.