Lloyd Billingsley offers Daily Caller readers an assessment of some disturbing news from the Golden State.
A federal patent examiner recently made news for doing no work for 18 weeks while getting paid his full salary. In similar style, senior policy advisor John Beale of the Environmental Protection Agency told his bosses he worked for the CIA and did no work for two and a half years, receiving not only his full salary but some $500,000 in bonuses. Those cases may be hard to top, but California is giving it a shot.
The massive California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) maintains 3,500 full-time employees who do little beyond drawing their salaries. This revelation emerges from a 2014 report by the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst (LAO), which notes Caltrans’ surplus of engineers who prepare and supervise construction projects. The news disturbs some legislators.
“It is not okay to continue having these people sitting idly by while we desperately need that money for transportation projects today,” assemblywoman Kristin Olsen told reporters. “There is absolutely no good policy reason to use taxpayer funds to pay 3,500 people to just be sitting around at a desk.” But Caltrans does it anyway.
The Legislative Analyst recommends cutting the positions. That does not please California’s government employee union bosses such as Bruce Blanning, executive director of Professional Engineers in California Government.
“The LAO approaches these issues in an almost childlike manner” Blanning told Andrew Holzman of the Sacramento Bee. Blanning opposes the cuts and recommends keeping staff on hand for future projects, when state or federal money might be available. So his union likes the idea of drawing a full-time paycheck for doing nothing, courtesy of California taxpayers.
