The State Worker

The question from Cy Musiker about Gov. Jerry Brown's new budget proposal to cut state workers' hours and pay by 5 percent showed the KQED newsman pays attention.

Start with managing a city, tack on fundraising for a major nonprofit, blend in an eye for reading cultural trends and fold in the pressure of an epic budget crisis and you'll get a sense of what Cathy Taylor's job is like.

Government policies can be like raising kids: They test your sense of what's fair.

The event on the Capitol's west steps seemed like a public employee union rally: provocative speakers whipping up an audience of hundreds sympathetic to the cause.

We're months from when the real fighting starts, but already the labor union and business interests on opposite sides of a November ballot measure are honing their messages.

A wave of emails hit The State Worker's in-box after a Bee report on Monday noted that Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown's administration hired fewer state workers last year than his GOP predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, added in 2010.

Talk to state workers who deal with the public and you'll soon hear a word that outsiders don't normally associate with government: customers.

Can you find fault with this logic?

In 2007, James Ward sold his San Diego-area dental practice and moved to Blythe, the remote desert town between Los Angeles and Phoenix.

Well, here's another CalPERS computer gaffe story.

If you want a peek at what's coming for state labor contracts, take a look at the current deals. They're not likely to change much.