Some State Employees found that they just could not make it through the month with 24 hours of pay hacked out of the checks. To balance the California State Budget, the governor, as chief executive, furloughed most state employees for 3 Fridays each month. Today while volunteering for my church, I got an e-mail the food bank we support talking about a new trend of state employees asking for food aid. There is also an article in the Sacramento Bee about the situation.

I frankly think the state should be embarrassed that it is balancing the budget by sending its employees to food banks. This does not mean I thing cuts in staffing don't need to be made. The fact that the government has not fallen apart is proof that like most governmental agencies there is not a lot of slack in the system. On the other hand, this is effectively an unnegotiated pay cut of 14 percent. From personal experience, I know how hard it is to change lifestyles that dramatically and that quickly. We were lucky in that we had a financial cushion, and that a car was paid off a month ofter our 10% cut. Not everyone will be that lucky.

On the other end of things, I'm not completely sympathetic to the SEIU. One of the reason that these across the board furloughs happened was because the state had no other options to cut payroll. The union has distributed lawn signs for State employees to post in their yards, and I am struck by the density of them in places like Land Park where the average home is still $750,000. I know from my time working in state government that it is also far easier to transfer, promote, or just hide lazy, unproductive or unqualified government employees then it is to let them go. Managers, who are as often the cause of this problem as not, cannot fire employees who don't perform so instead, they higher a second employee to do the first job and because the government has deep pockets, it just becomes part of the budget.

I think we need to restore State Employees their full negotiated wages. The vast majority work hard and provide invaluable service. It is embarrassing to have state employees standing in food lines. On the other hand I think that 1 in 10 State employees could probably be let go, "For budget reasons," and if it were the ones who sit at their desk accomplishing nothing but drawing breath and a paycheck then the efficiency of government would actually increase.