Like, for example, canceling visits at the prisons. The San Luis Obispo Tribune has an article called California prisons suspend inmate visits to save money. This article was published June 17, 2010. Yes, they are serious.

* “State corrections officials said Thursday that canceling visits at the 33 adult prisons June 26-27 will save about $400,000 in overtime costs.”

Everyone knows how much employers hate having to pay overtime to their employees, and it seems the State of California is no different. I’m troubled by a few things here. First of all, this is a really blatant example of how saving some money is more important than the quality of people’s lives. No, I’m not actually talking about the prisoners, although I am certain that their lives are a bit nicer when they are allowed to see friends and family. I actually mean the lives of the friends and family that cannot go see their loved one that weekend. It’s not the fault of the loved ones that their family member is in prison, yet they are the ones who are going to be hurt by this.

The other thing that troubles me has to do with the overtime. California has one of the highest unemployment rates right now. Solve the overtime problem by hiring a few more people! But no, no… that would be logical. That would actually make sense.

I’ve blogged before about the infamous “Furlough Days” that government employes have had to take. I’ve mentioned before that I was having extreme difficulty getting through to the EDD, and to CalPERS, (the group holding onto my “retirement” money), in part because of these damned Furlough Days. In fact, the recorded message at CalPERS specifically stated that the reason why I couldn’t get through to them was because of the Furlough Days. (This was another way of saying “Don’t blame us! It’s not our fault that no one is answering the phones!”)

In case you don’t know what that means, let me explain. A Furlough Day is a day when an entire office is closed. This generally takes place on a Friday, and can be once a week, or once every two weeks. The employees are required to take a mandatory day off on those days, without pay. I think the idea was that the money saved from not paying the hourly government workers was supposed to somehow help with California’s massive debt.

No one likes the Furlough Days. Workers don’t like making less money than they expected to be making, due to a forced closing of the entire workplace several times a month. Citizens don’t like that they cannot get the help that they need, (help that can only come from that particular government office), because it’s closed on a weekday when it should be open. No one likes how jammed the phone lines get on the days when these offices are actually open. Just because those offices were closed doesn’t mean that people will magically not need any help anymore! There has been a lot of controversy as to the legality of these forced days off without pay.

Well, it looks like the dreaded Furlough Days are a thing of the past! The San Luis Obispo Tribune has another article called : Friday is final furlough for California State Workers. According to this article, the Govenator has decided not to extend the Furlough Days into the next fiscal year, which starts July 1, 2010.

Here’s some quick facts about the Furlough Days:
* “The workers have been furloughed a total of 46 days since Schwarzenegger issued the order, which took effect in February 2009.”

* “The furloughs translated into a pay cut of about 14 percent for workers.”

* While the administration is saying that the Furlough Days have saved about $1 billion dollars in the general fund, and $2.2 billion dollars in overall savings, other government agencies say that California actually lost money due to the Furlough Days.

* The Franchise Tax board thinks California lost $652 million dollars due to the Furlough Days, because staff had fewer hours to work to collect outstanding debts, and to initiate audits. The Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes (seriously, that exists!), noted that since prisons have to be staffed around the clock, they couldn’t just close the prisons for Furlough Days, so they didn’t.

Ok, so, the Furlough Days are gone! Yay? Don’t celebrate yet. Here’s the new plan:
* ” Schwarzenegger previously said he didn’t plan to extend the furloughs into the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. Instead, he was asking unions to support salary cuts and increase the amount employees contribute to pension benefits.”

Yep. Instead of reducing workers pay due to Furlough Days, the Govenator has decided to cut workers pay. He is going to cut their salaries AND take more money from their paychecks to put into the pension benefits. In other words, his plan is to add to the high number of workers that are under-employed.

When I started working for the public school I worked for, I was automatically enrolled in something called “CalPERS”. To me, this sounds like a piece of machinery.

“Yep, it’s broken. Your gonna need a new CalPERS.”

CalPERS stands for the “California Public Employees’ Retirement System”. My best guess is that it is designed so that people who work for the public schools : teachers, teacher’s aids, janitors, secretaries, recess monitors, and everybody else, can be assured of a retirement fund. I think this fund is supposed to be magically waiting for someone who has spent a lifetime working for the California Public schools, whenever he or she is ready to retire.

Considering that California was unable to afford to continue to employ so many teachers, teacher’s aids, janitors, secretaries, recess monitors, and everybody else recently, I have little faith that anyone will actually end up receiving their promised retirement money. Perhaps I’m jaded.

I am between gigs right now. I finished all my freelance assignments, and haven’t secured any new ones yet. Therefore I had time today to try and contact CalPERS, and also to blog about it.

I tried their website, but it was somewhat confusing. From what I can tell, you have to sign up for it, despite the fact that you are already in the CalPERS system. So, I decided to skip it, and try calling them instead.

Naturally, I got a busy signal on my first attempt. I tried again, and got another busy signal. So much for the second attempt. Shawn was kind enough to dial the phone for me on my third attempt, to make sure my dyslexia wasn’t causing me to accidently dial a wrong number.

This time I got through to an automated system. What was said went by pretty fast. There was something about “Obama”, and that we should listen to whatever the computer had to say about that. I quickly got confused about what I was supposed to say when the automated voice stopped talking.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.” says the computerized female voice, before repeating the question I didn’t know the answer to.

Eventually, I fought my way through the labyrinth the automated voice was taking me through, and was able to yell “AGENT” into the phone. It seemed as though I would get to speak to an actual person soon.

Instead, I had to listen to the computer tell me that, due to the government of California forcing them to take Furlough Days each and every Friday, call volumes were extremely high on Monday and Tuesday.

This is the first time I’ve ever called a state agency, and had the computerized recorded voice actually give me what amounts to “Don’t blame me…. it’s not MY fault you can’t get through”. It’s shocking, and disturbing. It means that they are aware that people are having a problem getting through to CalPERS, but, instead of doing something about it, they have decided to just pass the blame to somewhere else.

In case you aren’t aware of what a Furlough Day is, let me quickly explain. Quite some time ago, the “Governator”, decided that a good way to have the State of California save money would be to force many (if not all) employees of state run agencies to take the day off every Friday, or every other Friday, so that the entire thing could be closed down for the entire day. The employees affected by these forced days off were not getting paid for those days. In short, it was a way for the government to cut the amount of money it had to pay out to State employees. Furlough Days are not a choice, they are enforced.

This brings me to today. Here I sit, a former employee of a State run agency (the California public school system), who is being prevented from contacting another State run agency (CalPERS), because the government of the State of California has created days where that State run agency (CalPERS), is closed. The backlog of work that couldn’t be done on the days they were forced to be closed is making it impossible for me to actually get through to CalPERS today, a day they are open for business. Considering how many school employees lost their jobs recently, I am certain that I am not the only person having this same frustrating experience right now.

Just when it looked like I would get to talk to an actual person at CalPERS, the computerized voice was back. I was told that the wait time to talk to an agent was 36 minutes. There was some information about how I could get off the phone, and have CalPERS call me back when an agent was available, so I wouldn’t lose my place in line, but I chose not to go that route. I don’t trust it.

Instead, I will just have to keep calling, and keep trying to access my money. It’s sad that every single time I need to contact a place that is run by the State of California, I am having the same problems.

Read the article for full details. In short, a while ago, the State of California ran out of money. Oops! Hate when that happens. But, instead of having to pay some huge finance charges at whichever banks it was using, (like, you know, everybody else), California had a different idea. It asked (rich) people and (well to do) businesses, to let the State borrow some more money. In return, the State of California issued a bunch of IOUs. Yes, actual IOUs, (although, the article states that the piece of paper the IOU came on was not worded quite so clearly as that).

It’s like being in elementary school all over again. Where your bestest friend forever forgets his or her lunch money, and asks to borrow some of yours. The lined notebook paper comes out, and the friend hastily scribbles an IOU and and adds his or her signature, and then you both nom some super greasy pizza from the school cafeteria. Remember people doing that back when you were a kid? Now, try and recall what happened to those IOUs. Go ahead. Take a minute or two. Give up? Here’s the answer to what happened to most of those: they got lost, and forgotten about, and you never ended up getting your money back. Most of them got disintegrated in the washing machine when your mom did the next load of laundry, and threw in a few pairs of your grungy jeans.

Same thing is happening right now, with the State of California. Lots of individuals, and a bunch of businesses, all over California, have unclaimed IOUs right this minute. And, just like the notebook paper IOUs, back when you were a kid, a bunch of people lost track of where their IOU ended up at, and then forgot all about them.

So now, California has this bizarre problem. It has the money to pay back the IOUs, and, unlike your BFF back in the day, California is trying to notify the people who are holding the IOUs, so they can come claim their money.

* “Across the state, 89,000 residents and businesses — including 2,315 here in San Francisco alone — are sitting on some $50 million in uncashed IOUs from the state, a souvenir of California’s most recent, but by no means its last, budget crisis.

If, sometime back in July, you lent California a bunch of money, and you just can’t remember where you put that silly little IOU…. then, in my opinion, you probably don’t actually “need” the money in the first place. And you didn’t need it then, either. In other words, the State of California, the state that has an incredibly high number of unemployed people right now…..somehow has a bunch of money, and is doing it’s best to make sure that this money goes back into the hands of…. people who are already wealthy. The deadline to claim your IOU is sometime in September 2010. All the rich people have plenty of time to go figure out which bank vault that IOU is in, or which vacation house they left it at.

Yes, I realize I am being incredibly sarcastic. And yes, I understand that this money was a loan, and loans are meant to be paid back at some point (with interest… let’s not forget the extra money the IOU holders are getting back). I get that. All I’m saying is that this article is making me ask a few questions.

How did the State of California manage to gather together enough money to not only pay back all it’s outstanding IOUs, but to do so with interest? Does this have something to do with all those mandatory Furlough days it was requiring state employees to take? (For those of you that don’t know, Furlough days happened at least once a month (generally more than that), where all the workers were forced take a day off, for ZERO pay).

Why on earth isn’t the State of California using that money to create jobs? If it did that, it would have less unemployed people. Less unemployed people means that more people can go out and buy things, (and pay State taxes on each and every item), and be good little Capitalists once again. More people paying a bunch of (already existing) State taxes means that the State of California would be able to collect more money, which it could then use to pay off the IOUs to the people who aren’t struggling to keep their houses and feed their children.

Priorities, State of California, Priorities! Time to take a look at yours.