Posts Tagged: department

Brown: State workers should pay more for retiree health care

Gov. Brown unveils his 2015-16 budget draft in the Capitol. (Photo: State of California)

by ED MENDEL posted 01.16.2015

Gov. Brown wants state workers to begin paying half the cost of their future retiree health care — a big change for workers making no payments for coverage that can pay 100 percent of the premium for a retiree and 90 percent for their dependents. The governor also wants state workers to be given the option of a lower-cost health insurance plan with higher deductibles.

Legislative legacy: Big bucks for retirees’ health care

Cannery Row workers of the 1950s depicted in an artistic cutout. (Photo: Mr. Interior/Shutterstock)

by ED MENDEL posted 12.22.2014

The debt or “unfunded liability” state Controller John Chiang reported last week for state worker retiree health care, $72 billion, is larger than the unfunded liability for state worker pensions reported by CalPERS in April, $50 billion. It’s a legislative legacy, a debt for state worker services received by one generation that lawmakers decided to let the next generations inherit.

UC boots deadlines to disclose spending

Students at UC Berkeley walk for their diplomas during graduation ceremonies. (Photo: Richard Thornton)

by SAMANTHA GALLEGOS posted 12.16.2014

Missing its own deadline last week, the University of California is now more than two months behind in disclosing to the state Legislature and the Department of Finance details of its expenses. The 10-campus university system first failed to meet an Oct. 1 deadline. It then submitted a seven-page preliminary account on Oct. 31 while requesting an additional six weeks to complete a final report. Those six weeks expired on Dec. 11.

Jean Shiomoto: From the Delta to the DMV

DMV Director Jean Shiomoto on the job. (Photos: Scott Duncan, Capitol Weekly)

by JAMES CAMERON posted 10.24.2014

Jean Shiomoto, who grew up on a pear farm in the Delta, has one of the toughest jobs in California – she runs the Department of Motor Vehicles. In this car-happy state – by one estimate, L.A. County alone has 5.9 million registered automobiles, more than all but five states – anything do with with automobiles is a big deal.

DWR: Progress on delta tunnels

Islands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, an aerial view. The Delta is home to about half of California's drinking water. (Photo: Worldislandinfo.com

by CHRIS AUSTIN posted 09.29.2014

California’s top water official told a key gathering of south state water interests that “hard-earned progress” is being made on the Brown administration’s controversial plan to build twin tunnels through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The comments by Mark Cowin, director of the state Department of Water Resources, were aimed in part at dispelling rumors that the project had run aground, perhaps permanently.

*UC Berkeley’s handling of rape complaints draws fire

Students walk across the campus at UC Berkeley. (Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman, Christian Science Monitor, via AP)

by MIA SHAW posted 07.25.2014

UC Berkeley – under federal investigation for its handling of sexual assault complaints and the target of a critical state audit – has a flawed system for dealing with rape allegations and an internal procedure that critics say shields assailants from criminal charges. The school is one of 55 campuses across the country being investigated by the U.S. Department of Education for allegedly mishandling cases of sexual assault.

OPINION People who use IHSS, their advocates and the legislature asked: Where are the 40,000 new people ready, willing, qualified and able to do this work, at low pay, with no sick time, no vacation time and usually no health benefits – to take the places of the people already doing the work – some of them for decades?

Odd alliance on medical marijuana: Cops, activists

A dispensary's sign on Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley. (Photo: Laurie Avocado)

by SAMANTHA GALLEGOS posted 05.20.2014

An unlikely relationship is forming between medical marijuana advocates and local peace officers. Traditionally, they have been in conflict,, but they are coming together to resolve one logistical aspect of the unregulated cannabis industry in California that deals with patient confiscation rights and evidence holding.

Election 2014: California voters will decide in November whether to raise the decades-old $250,000 cap on pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice lawsuits. The ballot initiative, which also calls for drug and alcohol testing for doctors, will join four other measures that already have qualified for the ballot.

California won a two-year extension to meet a federal court order to cut its prison population, but a three-judge panel made clear Monday that it has doubts about the state’s handling of prison overcrowding. A three-judge federal panel accepted Gov. Jerry Brown’s new plan to reduce the population, but reprimanded the state for its delay in finding what they described as a “durable” solution to the prison crisis. The state has put inmates in out-of-state prisons and private custody.