Some ground-level snapshots of how California's budget mess has affected state workers:
• Attorneys with the Department of Consumer Affairs, the agency that investigates and prosecutes everything from unlicensed contractors to shady auto repair shops, can't do legal research online.
The contract with its Internet service, Westlaw, has been suspended, according to a memo sent to the State Worker and confirmed with a department official.
• The Department of Health Services has canceled several contracts, including one with a trucking firm that moved files to off-site storage.
"Now we've got boxes in offices piling up that need to be archived," said Health Services spokeswoman Dorsey Griffith.
• Franchise Tax Board auditors in San Francisco spend less time auditing and more time filling out paperwork and figuring out the precise bureaucratic language that will justify work-related trips, since the Schwarzenegger administration has tightened the standards for business travel.
"Our people bring in an average $1,000 to $2,000 per hour for the state when they're out auditing," said Terry Sutherland, a supervisor at the board's San Francisco office. "But now they have to sit down and write memos and fill out forms that explain why their travel is an 'emergency' under the governor's order."
• Joann Stewart, who works in the Division of Correctional Health Care Services, says that a co-worker is "panicked" that she won't be able to pay her rent at the end of the month if Schwarzenegger succeeds in clipping state workers' hourly wages to the federal minimum.
Stewart's conclusion: "Our pay and working conditions are not a priority for our governor or the general public."
If that sounds like a lot of whining to you, imagine your company's top managers publicly fighting over the firm's direction and how much you make.
First the CEO says he can whack your check to $6.55 per hour. But wait. Some workers are exempt. Others get nothing. And others can ask for an exemption. Maybe you'll escape the wage reduction. Maybe you won't and you'll resent the folks who do.
Cue the lawyers. Strike up the lawsuits. Meanwhile, the company bleeds red ink. Meanwhile, the top managers can't agree on the next step.
Would you be inspired to do your best work?
"That's the collateral damage here," said Sutherland, a state worker for 42 years. "Everything just tightens up. It's just one more pound added to the load that people are already carrying."
No successful business would conduct itself like this.
But state government isn't a business. It's not profit-driven. It has to conduct its affairs openly. It has to allow dissent.
And that sometimes makes it messy, uncomfortable, inconvenient, embarrassing and, yes, inefficient.
Call The Bee's Jon Ortiz, (916) 321-1043. Read his blog, The State Worker, at www.sacbee.com/blogs.
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