sacbee.com: Schwarzenegger orders minimum wage for state workers

[Predicto]

Yeah those are the only two big disadvantages of the area I have forseen. Hopefully the other aspects(weather, culture among others) will more than make up for it! Any recommendations on where to live (or where not to), for a single person who doesn't mind roomates that has to commute to Stanford(working there, not as a student)?

Well, it doesn't get much more expensive than Palo Alto (but it's going to spoil you if you get to live there). Maybe you can find a group house. The University might have a bulletin board service or something to hook you up.

If you are going outside Palo Alto, I recommend going north toward San Francisco, not south toward San Jose. The further north you go, the closer you get to San Francisco and the further you get from San Jose, which is always a good thing, both for traffic and for character. Menlo Park or Redwood City are both close to Palo Alto and would have rentals. Forget Atherton or Woodside unless you are richer than Croesus.

You can always get housing deals in the small neighboring community of East Palo Alto, but that's because crime is a problem there. It's the only ghetto in the whole area. If that doesn't bother you, it's really convenient. The whole rest of the peninsula is really very safe, though some parts are more interesting than others.

Another option is to live a few stops up the Peninsula on CalTrain, and keep a bike at the station in Palo Alto. Only drive to work when you need to. I wouldn't come all the way down from San Francisco unless you really like long commutes, but San Mateo or Burlingame would be fine.

[The Evil Genius]

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/06/2870299/how-did-state-workers-get-in-this.html

Viewpoints: How did state workers get in this mess?

Published: Tuesday, Jul. 6, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 9A

As politicians run for statewide office this year, we hear many of the same old myths about state government trotted out. In the absence of any better ideas on how to remedy the budget problem, conservative candidates hope that they can ride the coattails of conventional bigotry aimed at state employees to shrink state government.

Are California employees unproductive and inefficient? Apparently not. In 2008, among all states, California has the third-lowest ratio of state employees to population, 28 percent below the national average. You could conclude that either California is getting more service out of each of its employees or the state is underserved. The ratio has recently worsened – if you consider public services important.

Between March 2008 and October 2009, state and local government declined by approximately 70,000 jobs while California added approximately 600,000 residents. And the governor has imposed furloughs which mean that state employees since mid-2009 were on the job 14 percent less than before.

Are state workers overpaid? The value of the same state job classification has declined by 18 percent in real dollars (adjusted for inflation) over the last 15 years (not including furlough pay losses). When you add the increased deductions that are taken out of paychecks for medical insurance, the state employee is being paid about 30 percent less for the same job than was considered a fair wage in the 1990s.

It gets worse. After including furlough pay losses of 14 percent this past year, the state worker's take-home pay is 44 percent less than it was. The governor has proposed similar cuts in state work time and pay for the coming year. To add insult to injury, this time his cuts include a permanent salary decrease of 10 percent in take-home pay.

Compare the decline in state worker pay in the last 15 years (down 18 percent) to the pay for state legislators. It has gone up from $72,000 to $116,208, an 11 percent increase in real dollars. This gives state employees hope; the legislators would have to be total hypocrites to go along with the governor's proposed cuts in state employee compensation for the next fiscal year.

Well, gosh, maybe those government employees are just not very smart. Once again the facts – and my experience – say otherwise. Jobs in the public sector typically require more education than equivalent positions in the private sector. State and local employees are twice as likely to hold a college degree or higher as compared with private sector employees. Only 23 percent of private sector employees have completed college, as compared with about 48 percent in the public sector.

The people I work with at my small state agency are very smart, energetic, innovative and highly motivated professionals. Almost all of the non-support staff have a master's or doctorate or law degree and are graduates of Ivy League schools, Cal or Stanford. Most are making about $65,000 per year. Yes, they could easily make much more in the private sector.

Finally, as everyone knows, government employees get way more benefits as part of a bloated compensation package than non-government employees, right? No, not true. Although benefits make up a slightly larger share of compensation for the state and local sector, state and local employees earn less than private sector counterparts even after factoring in the value of retirement, health care and other benefits.

On average, total compensation is 6.8 percent lower for state employees than for comparable private sector employees, according to an April study by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence and the National Institute on Retirement Security.

Many believe, because it fits with their preconceived notions, that government employees are lazy or incompetent and wish that the governor would fire the lot of us. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for or you may get it.

If the governor achieves the further pay cuts he is seeking, the best and most experienced state employees will go elsewhere, leaving the least experienced and skilled to take up the slack and with the state unable to compete in the market for good new employees.

California will be the worse for this loss for many years to come, long after the recession is over. Why destroy something that you are only going to have to try to reconstruct at greater cost later?

Do you want your taxes spent on or by someone who is competent and honored to be able to provide a public service or someone who is not?

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Peter S. Brand is a state employee and a resident of Alameda.