Good morning! Happy Monday.

It looks like the lawmaker who is currently under a temporary restraining order from his wife will not face any immediate repercussions in the Assembly, Speaker Anthony Rendon told CalWatchdog on Friday. 

Last week, the two chairwomen of the Women’s Legislative Caucus asked Asm. Roger Hernández, D-West Covina, to step down from his Labor and Employment Committee chairmanship and his other committee assignments while the issue with his wife is being worked out. 

Hernández refused. And Rendon, a Paramount Democrat, said he’s going to wait and see what happens: “If the allegations are more fully validated, I will be prepared to take further action.”

Hernández has been accused of wrongdoing before. And Senate Democratic leadership found itself in similar situations a few years ago. CalWatchdog has more.

In other news: 

• Sharp criticism over BART’s management and budget practices could imperil the transit system’s pending $3.5 billion bond to “upgrade the system’s aging infrastructure and rail cars,” writes CalWatchdog. 

• Moody’s, the major credit-rating agency, panned California as the least able big state to endure a recession, writes The Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters. Texas was number 1. The CA rating is largely dependent on the the state’s reliance on income taxes, which are highly volatile. 

• After shelling out big bucks mostly to candidates no longer in the race, California’s GOP donors are closing their checkbooks to Republican presidential candidates, the Los Angeles Times reports. 

• With 34 candidates running for one U.S. Senate seat, voters should read the ballot instructions very carefully, the Los Angeles Times reports. And if you’re looking to learn more about the front-runner candidates, KCRA 3 and the San Francisco Chronicle are hosting a Senate debate Monday night.

Assembly

• In at 1 p.m. Several hearings, including a few from Budget subcommittees. 

Senate

• In a 2 p.m., lots of bills to be considered by the Appropriations Committee (starting at 10 a.m.).

Gov. Brown

• No public events scheduled.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

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“Yet despite transit’s importance, most metropolitan transit systems are inadequate. In no major metropolitan area, for example, are more than 12.6% of jobs accessible within a 45-minute, one-way commute via transit. This is particularly problematic for poorer metropolitan-area residents, who are most likely to be transit-dependent.

“Why is transit so inadequate? One reason is that while many metropolitan areas maintain  ‘radial’ transit networks designed to transport workers to and from a traditional central business district, patterns of economic activity have actually become increasingly decentralized. Research shows that nearly half the jobs in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas are located more than 10 miles from the edge of the central business district, while only 20% of jobs are located within three miles of downtown. In this context, ‘grid’ transit networks—which do a much better job of connecting suburbs with one another—are more effective than radial ones.

‘Supposed to be the future of public transportation’

Fixed-rail mass transit just can’t compare with small bus fleets in getting people from where they live to where they work. So one would think that as a matter of social justice, bus rapid transit would be hugely popular in liberal communities?

Nope. Not even close. A San Francisco Chronicle story shows that in the Bay Area, the transit approach has been stalled:

“Bus rapid transit was supposed to be the future of public transportation.

“A technology combining more efficient buses and relatively simple improvements to streets, BRT, as it’s known, has been heralded as a fairly cheap high-capacity transit system — a subway on tires — that can be put on the streets quickly.

“But in the Bay Area, the introduction of bus rapid transit is advancing at a pace akin to that of a Muni bus stuck in rush-hour traffic. More than a dozen years after the region started talking about the speedy buses, the Bay Area is still waiting for its first one.

“Bus rapid transit projects in San Francisco, the East Bay and the South Bay are still in the works, but they have stalled after running into community skepticism and opposition to the removal of traffic lanes and parking spaces. The opposition from merchants and residents has caused some cities, even progressive bastions like Berkeley, to refuse to allow transit-only lanes or to drop out of BRT projects altogether.”

The Chronicle article ignores two crucial issues. The first is that the Bay Area loves the mass transit program whose main ridership is middle-class and upper-middle-class — the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. The second is that historically one of the reasons bus rapid transit has been so opposed is because it involves vehicles. Even if they’re vehicles that don’t have internal combustion engines, liberals don’t like vehicles — outside of their own.

Poor sued over rail-favoring transit policies in L.A.

In the early 1990s, this attitude led to a social-justice lawsuit in Los Angeles. This story is from the Dec. 31, 1996, Los Angeles Times:

“When it began in 1992 as the brainchild of labor and environmental activist Eric Mann, the Bus Riders Union was seen by some as a gadfly group whose members had been escorted out of MTA meetings by transit police.

“Now, the group has won official recognition and a place at the decision-making table. With the October settlement of its lawsuit against the MTA, the Bus Riders Union is included in a joint working group with MTA officials that will oversee the implementation of future bus improvements.

“But the group’s recent success is just one part of its broader goals.

“‘Building a first-class bus system is part of building a social movement,’ organizer Kikanza Ramsey said. To the Bus Riders Union, better buses are an important improvement–along with better wages and working conditions and a cleaner environment–to the quality of life of poor and minority Los Angeles residents.

“The union contends that improving the bus system is a civil rights issue because most bus riders are minorities and have low incomes. Forty-seven percent of bus riders are Latinos, 23% are African American, 19% are white and 8% are Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders.

“Its suit alleged that massive spending on rail projects diverted funds from poor and minority bus riders.”

Bingo.

The lack of public support for the strike is striking in that the union is arguably the state’s most sympathetic public employee union. The union says that 99 percent of its food workers, custodians and respiratory therapists are income-eligible for some form of public assistance, which it contrasts with the bloated salaries and lavish benefits provided to top UC administrators.

Despite the clear income inequality among the 190,000 faculty and staff at the University of California, a majority of Democrat elected officials have failed to publicly comment on the upcoming strike.

High-paid BART employees undermined low-paid UC workers

Since last summer’s strike by Bay Area transit workers, Democrat politicians have become fickle friends of organized labor.

Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “among the best-off in the country,” the 2,300 BART mechanics, custodians, station agents, train operators and clerical staff earned an average base salary of $71,000 per year plus $11,000 in overtime pay. That was before the union received a 15.38 percent pay increase over four years in exchange for increased pension contributions. Previously, BART paid both the employee and employer pension contributions.

Several Democrat leaders, including Assembly candidate Steve Glazer, publicly opposed the strike, signaling an intraparty split on labor issues.

“The prospect that well-paid Bay Area Rapid Transit system workers with lavish benefits and little-known perks might inconvenience rich white-collar liberals in the San Francisco area,” wrote CalWatchdog’s Chris Reed, “has finally triggered an intraparty battle of the kind that California Democrats have somehow managed to avoid for decades.”

Field Poll: Public sours on unions

Following that bruising battle at BART, for the first time, Californians have a negative view of organized labor. Last December, a Field Poll found that a plurality of registered voters said that unions “do more harm than good.” Forty five percent of those surveyed viewed unions negatively, a 16-point swing in just two years.

Union approval has even fallen among union households. Thirty one percent of union households have a negative view of unions, a huge increase from the 18 percent result reported in March 2011.

“It seems like they keep winning the battles,” Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said back in December when the poll was released. “The question becomes, ‘Are they moving the public in the direction where they may lose the war?’”

That first casualty in the war against unions are the low-paid service workers at the University of California. Earlier this month, AFSCME 3299 released a  list of elected officials throughout California who “have united in support of AFSCME 3299’s pursuit of a fair contract settlement with UC.” Just eight state legislators were included on the list.

Even former union members are jettisoning their union credentials. State Sen. Norma Torres, D-Pomona, who recently launched her third campaign in three years, wasn’t among the small group of state legislators to publicly back the lowest-paid workers at the University of California. Her absence was noticeable given that she’s a former member of AFSCME. Since being elected to the Legislature, Torres has distanced herself from the union by omitting her union activities from her official biography.

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez stands with UC workers

Not all Democrats are shunning labor unions out of political expediency. Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, a former secretary-treasurer of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, has repeatedly offered support for UC’s lowest-paid workers.

“UC continues to disregard the well-being of its lowest wage workers,” said Gonzalez, one of the eight Democrat legislators to publicly stand up for UC workers. “It makes no sense for the Legislature to continue to write the UC system a blank check while they continue to increase the wages of those at the very top, while leaving our service workers to be subsidized by taxpayers through safety net programs.”

She added, “All work is dignified and all workers should be accorded respect by our public university system.”

In addition to Gonzalez, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who serves on the UC Board of Regents, has voiced his support for AFSCME 3299 on various social networks. The union adds that more members are silently with them.

“Whether on picket lines, phone lines, in letters or in statements to the press, the overwhelming majority of the state Legislature’s Democratic Caucus has stood shoulder to shoulder with AFSCME 3299 members throughout their struggle for fairness and dignity at the University of California, and we are deeply grateful for their support,” AFSCME 3299 said in a statement. “We are equally grateful to the members of the GOP Caucus who have stood with us.  Our fight is not a matter of right and left, but right and wrong.”

96 percent of UC service workers and patient care workers voted in favor of the strike authorization. AFSCME 3299 represents 8,300 service workers and 13,000 patient care technical workers.

The eight legislators who publicly back AFSCME 3299

• State Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett
• Assembly member Marc Levine
• Assembly member Paul Fong
• Assembly member Jimmy Gomez
• Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez
• Assembly member Shirley Weber, Ph.D.
• Assembly member Rob Bonta
• Assembly member Reggie Jones-Sawyer

California’s Bay Area suffers the third worst traffic congestion in the nation, behind Honolulu and Los Angeles, according to USA Today. That congestion occurs despite Bay Area Rapid Transit‘s 104 miles of track taking nearly 400,000 people off of the roads each weekday.

So when the BART unions went on strike twice last year, the Bay Area’s normally bad congestion turned into a gridlock nightmare.

“Freeways have choked to a standstill,” reported the AP on July 2, two days into the first strike. “Lines for ferry service tripled, and boats were crammed to standing-room only. Buses were stuffed with riders who felt fortunate to be on board as many commuters were literally left in the dust when buses zoomed by without as much as a honk or an explanation.”

$73 million hit

Commutes that normally took a half hour became two-hour slogs. Many workers arrived late and/or left early or just stayed home altogether. As a result, each day of the strike cost the Bay Area at least $73 million in lost worker productivity, according to a Bay Area Council Economic Institute estimate.

“The Bay Area economy is suffering, along with hundreds of thousands of commuters,” said Jim Wunderman, Bay Area Council president/CEO in a July 2 statement.

That suffering has translated into strong opposition to allowing BART strikes, according to an Aug. 2 BAC poll. Seventy percent oppose allowing BART strikes, including 62 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of those who belong to a union or have a family member in a union.

Steve Glazer, a candidate for Joan Buchanan’s termed-out 16th Assembly District seat, capitalized on the angst. He spent weeks at BART stations throughout the Bay Area collecting thousands of signatures on anti-strike petitions.

“A strike will cripple our economy, hurt workers getting to their jobs, and limit access to schools and health care facilities. This is wrong,” Glazer said in a Sept. 20 statement. “I support state legislation to prohibit public transportation workers from striking. Strike bans exist in other states. Transit systems in New York, Massachusetts, Chicago and Washington have restrictions against strikes.

“The impact of a strike against a regional transit system like BART will be felt across the state.  This is not an issue that should be in the hands of individual transit boards. We need a statewide law prohibiting transportation strikes.”

Union threats

While Glazer was a hero to many beleaguered commuters, the Democrat said he has become a lightning rod for union hatred.

“They have made it clear to me that I’ll never be elected to any public office ever again in my life,” Glazer told KGO radio. “One union leader came up to me within hours after I announced my petition effort and said, ‘You put nails in your coffin.’

“So they’ve made it clear that I’ve made a huge miscalculation, that they don’t want to talk about the merits. They’ve made clear that it’s personal, and it’s political, and will affect anything that I choose to do in the future.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, there has been little, if any, backing for Glazer from other Bay Area politicians.

But Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, said in an Oct. 23 statement marking the end of the second strike that something needs to be done to fix the system:

“This strike was devastating for commuters throughout the Bay Area, and could not go on any longer. The current system failed the Bay Area. The commuters faced nightly uncertainty, and daily congestion, as this contract dispute continued. This must not happen again. I have gone through at least five BART contract negotiations in my time as an elected official from the Bay Area – clearly the process is not working. We owe it to the commuters to fix this.”

DeSaulnier chairs the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, which he said was “investigating how other metropolitan areas around the nation avoid this kind of situation. After conducting the investigation, the committee will pursue every possible remedy to ensure this never happens again. We will continue to work with affected stakeholders to find lasting solutions.”

Bill would ban transit strikes

While DeSaulnier’s committee continues its investigation, Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff of Diamond Bar pushed ahead recently with Senate Bill 423. In addition to prohibiting public transportation workers from striking, his bill would have:

• Repealed statutes governing public transportation labor disputes, including requirements governing labor relations when a strike is threatened.
• Proscribed penalties and sanctions for employees and unions that participate in, cause, encourage or condone strikes.

“It’s hard to think of a reason why an entire region should have to endure this kind of mass shut down,” Huff told the Senate Public Employment and Retirement Committee on Jan. 13. “Many public services are considered essential: police officers and firefighters, for example. Strikes are prohibited for this very reason. They are critical for the public on a day-to-day basis. The reliability of public transit should be no different.

“California has 1.3 billion transit trips per year governed by some 400 transit authorities. The reliability of these public transportation resources should be and must be protected. SB423 will protect transit riders and ensure these services are reliable by prohibiting union leaders from striking. The recent BART strike demonstrates how important public transit is in California. And if we are going to rely on mass transit, then we need to make mass transit reliable.”

Huff added that his bill is based on similar strike-ban legislation in New York.

“Other states have recognized how important this is,” he said. “Even in the Bay Area, a beacon of liberal politics, upwards of 70 percent support a ban on transit strikes.”

But none of those 70 percent made it to the hearing. Huff brought no witnesses, and no one else spoke in favor of SB423.

Unions defend right to strike

Labor unions, however, showed up in strong numbers to argue against the bill, which they see as an assault on their collective bargaining rights.

“What the bill fails to recognize is that the collective bargaining process is very intricate,” said Michael Bolden, representing the Service Employees International Union. “It’s supposed to have a lot of give and take on both sides. What it also does not recognize is the history or underlying rationale of why a strike may be considered by a bargaining unit. It also fails to recognize what a labor union will consider prior to even calling a strike.

“What the bill is is extremely punitive. It confers rights upon an employer while essentially turning a blind eye to what an employer could or could not be doing during the process of collective bargaining. We firmly believe that, if this right is going to be taken away, it should be bargained away at the collective bargaining table. It shouldn’t be legislated.”

Kaitlin Vega, legislative advocate for the California Labor Federation, argued that Californians’ quality of life would be reduced if the ability to strike was taken away.

“California today faces the greatest level of inequality that we have ever seen,” she said. “In our view that is largely due to the diminished ability of workers to come together to engage in collective bargaining up to the point of withholding labor, which is always the last resort. But these collective bargaining rights have been essential to workers improving conditions, and really to the building of the middle class.

“And today we see such historic wage inequality. It makes it hard to understand why there would be further proposals to strip workers of their rights to collective bargaining. Especially because this bill would retain the ability of an employer to impose a contract, to lock workers out, to replace workers who go on strike. The employer would be left with all of their weapons at their disposal. And yet the workers would have no recourse. And that to us just seems fundamentally unfair and wrong.”

AFSCME: Ability to strike helped build America

Willie Pelote, representing the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, argued that nothing less than America’s future is at stake.

“Collective bargaining was a process that helped us build America,” he said. “And when you’re doing something like building America, you have differences of opinion from time to time. And then to come to the Legislature and ask to take away those taxpayers’ right to have those differences of opinion from an organization that was sitting on over a billion dollars. And then to hammer their workers into the ground, and ask them as citizens that live and reside in those communities and raise a family to take less while they are sitting on a reserve of over a billion dollars.

“And then to come here and ask you to give them the right to do that even more. It’s unconscionable. We are in opposition to this bill. It’s wrongheaded and headed in the wrong direction. We want to continue to build America. And it’s about time to let us go back and do that. Because that’s what we do best, build America.”

Committee chairman Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, acknowledged that something needs to be done to break the cycle of strikes and strike threats. But he argued against Huff’s bill, calling it an “extreme, kind of far-end way of dealing with it. I think it’s a complicated issue. We have a lot of local governments with, for example, binding arbitration for their police and fire. I think there can be more discussion how we can maybe mediate or resolve strikes in a more favorable way than the BART situation.”

The three committee Democrats then killed SB423 with a 3-2 vote against it.

Democrat hardball

Huff issued a statement after the bill’s defeat, blaming it on political hardball by Democrats:

“Perhaps this bill should have been heard first in the Senate Transportation Committee, since it’s all about making sure our transit systems actually work for the public. But instead it was sent to the committee that focuses on the concerns of public workers. That should tell you something about the priorities of the majority party.”

Vowing to continue pursuing “the idea of protecting residents against crippling public transit strikes,” Huff added that other legislators have indicated they will introduce similar proposals in the coming months.

Of course, some areas are more resistant to this kind of epiphany than others. But now California's most liberal region is the middle of being mugged by today's political realities, and the result could be a whole lot more people in the Bay Area figuring out that union power translates into legal looting — at least if you don't fight back.

This is from a sharp Contra Costa Times editorial saying enough is enough, bring on a BART strike if the greedmongers demand more:

“The BART board already offered more than it should have. It can't go further while meeting its responsibilities to keep sufficient numbers of trains running reliably. As it is, more tax increases are planned.

“For their part, BART workers, who already receive great compensation, haven't budged. They continue to perseverate about side issues while maintaining absurd salary and benefit demands. Union leaders have ratcheted up expectations to such unrealistic levels that workers don't appreciate the sweet offer already on the table.

“Train operators, for example, already place among the top-paid in the nation. Employees contribute nothing toward their generous pensions. And health insurance costs most of them just $92 a month, no matter how many dependents they have.

“BART is offering a 10 percent wage increase over four years, while asking that workers contribute only minimally to their pensions and allowing them to keep the $92 health care deal. Yet, that's not enough for the unions.”

When chaos hits, know whom to blame

And if a strike does happen, and chaos ensues, the Contra Costa Times says be prepared — and don't blame transit officials. Blame the union bullies.

“So, start making plans to carpool or, if possible, work from home. Plan to travel outside commute hours. Stock up on household supplies to avoid unnecessary trips. Schedule virtual conferences rather than meeting in person.

“Finally, resist the temptation to blame BART directors. For your sake, they can't give anymore. Caving to absurd labor demands will only buy short-term peace at the expense of long-term financial insolvency.

“It would be great if there were an easy way out. There isn't. …

“It's the BART directors' responsibility to balance labor costs against billions of dollars of unmet capital needs. For too long, they have let politics trump financial reality. That must end, even if it means enduring a strike.”

In other words, don't give in — and don't believe the claims that it's BART management that's greedy, not the rank-and-file.

A groaner of an editorial

The contrast between the Contra Costa Times' clear-eyed view of the labor strife and the San Francisco Chronicle's judgment-free editorial is striking. The Chronicle implies everyone's to blame — and cites “BART's notoriously bad relations with its unions.”

Groan. Oh, yeah, they're just so mean to union members. Let's go to the videotape:

The truth? It’s an assault on the middle class

Allowing BART employees higher salaries and benefits on their already-high compensation will only result in increasing costs and increased fares for the riders.

It’s too easy to negotiate with other people’s money, and even easier to end up giving it away.

“… the most fascinating development [is] the lack of sympathy liberal-oriented Bay Area residents and even Democratic politicians are showing toward the BART workers.

“’I couldn’t even get a burrito without confronting someone who asked that we take our stand on behalf of the public,’ said San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, according to published reports. He said that BART riders need a ‘voice at this table.’ One newspaper column was aptly headlined, ‘In BART strike, it’s transit workers vs. just plain workers.’ …

“These reactions are a sign that the public is grasping a core point: When officials give in to excessive compensation demands, it is the public that pays the price. BART employees are an unsympathetic bunch given that their average pay is above $80,000 a year, they make no contributions to their generous pension plans and pay only 92 bucks a month for some of the best medical benefits on the planet. They are at the top of the compensation heap for California transit workers.”

Shades of Detroit

If BART’s compensation practices sound absurd, they shouldn’t. Consider the details behind Detroit’s bankruptcy:

“Fully 99.6 percent of the city’s retiree health-care liabilities are unfunded, and the program generally pays 80 percent to 100 percent of retirees’ medical costs. From 2007 to 2012, the city’s two biggest pension programs paid out $3.3 billion more in benefits than they took in through contributions or investment income. Unfunded obligations account for $9.2 billion of Detroit’s $18 billion debt: $3.5 billion comes from the pension part and $5.7 billion comes from the retiree health-care liability.

“… Salaries and benefits for current employees consume 36 percent of the city’s revenue. Legacy obligations, which include pension contributions and benefit payments, take an additional 39 percent of revenue….

“In many ways, Detroit is a model of tax-and-spend liberalism. … A few years ago, the nonpartisan Bay Area Center for Voting Research rated Detroit as the most liberal city in America.”

If the Bay Area wants to avoid its own Detroitization, regional leaders will stand up to the BART fleecers and say enough is enough.

“SACRAMENTO — The head of the Senate Transportation Committee praised Gov. Jerry Brown for preventing Bay Area transit workers from walking off the job Monday and said he is still considering legislation that would permanently take away their right to strike.

“Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said in an interview that workers in the Bay Area have rights that few of their colleagues around the state share.

“’Of the 10 largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and the Bay Area are the exception,’ he said. ‘All of the other large systems do not allow transit workers to strike.’

“DeSaulnier, who called himself ‘pro-labor and pro-transit,’ said neither labor nor management seems to want to change the current law, but the frequency of labor strife in the Bay Area Rapid Transit district has led him to look at the issue. The former Contra Costa County supervisor says that in the 22 years he’s been in elected office, workers have walked off the job or come close four times.”

Now when will minority lawmakers wake up?

The fact that affluent white Democratic lawmakers are beginning to internalize that union power isn’t always benign raises hope that California will finally have the much bigger political catharsis that it deserves: the eruption over the fact that the teachers unions which run Sacramento don’t care about struggling Latino and African-American students who make up a majority of kids at public schools.

I wrote about this last year for City Journal:

“[The California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers] enforce a Sacramento status quo that holds minorities in contempt and elevates teachers’ and unions’ interests above all others.

“Consider the modus operandi of nearly every California school district. Where are the best teachers most needed? In struggling schools with impoverished, mostly black and Latino students. But thanks to union power, where are those teachers concentrated? In affluent, safe schools. The struggling schools wind up with newly hired teachers and, often, bad or troubled teachers who couldn’t make the grade at better schools but who, thanks to union rules, can’t be fired. The problem is even worse than it appears, because revenue-deprived school districts often lay off the most junior teachers to ease budget woes. Some schools lose most of their teaching corps, destroying any continuity or momentum a school in a poor neighborhood may have managed to build. In the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the practice led to a successful ACLU lawsuit to end the ‘last hired, first fired’ policy in poor neighborhoods.”

Speaker Perez: Is this really ‘social justice’?

Attention, John Perez: When are you going to stop siding with the CTA and the CFT over the kids in your district?

Gloria Romero — like Perez, a Los Angeles Democrat — is right: The California public schools system’s practice of giving more weight to the interests of adult employees than of students deserves to be seen as a civil-rights issue, not a political scrap. If the BART dust-up makes even a few more elected Democrats think about this bigger picture, it will be for the good of nearly all Californians. The K-12 status quo has got to go.

So all you can do is groan when Dennis Cuff of the Contra-Costa Times reports on an insanely generous and pointless BART employee perk and calls it “little-known.” Why is it little-known? Because there is such consistently horrible coverage of how government bodies work.

“In a little-known perk at a transit system struggling to control the cost of benefits, BART gives its employees and their families free travel passes on its system — even after they retire.

“Although other Bay Area transit agencies offer their own free-ride programs, BART’s is among the most generous. It provides the same lifetime travel benefit to board members and their families, the only one of seven surveyed Bay Area transit operators to do so.

“The cost? All together, BART forgoes more than $2.1 million a year for the free rides — $741,000 of it for families.

“At a time when labor-management strife may lead to a second strike this summer, some critics say the extensive free travel policy is part of a tradition of overly generous benefits at BART.

“‘It sends a wrong signal that in a time when fares continue to go up there are people who have never worked for BART who ride for free,’ said Fred Wright Lopez, a Lafayette attorney and unsuccessful BART candidate last fall. ‘It’s an insult to BART’s riders.’“

Bosses benefit from lavish treatment of rank-and-file

This cavalier giveaway reflects another central truth about BART, many big transit agencies and scores of water districts around California — especially the gigantic Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The bosses don’t care if the rank-and-file get absurd salaries and benefits — because they’re getting even more absurd salaries and the same or better benefits. Who looks out for taxpayers inside BART? Nobody.

Which brings us back to how fundamentally horrible coverage of government is in California. I’ve lived here since 1990 and been a voracious consumer of newspapers the whole time. I have read thousands and thousands of stories about budget decisions at water agencies and other special districts, literally millions and millions of words.

Yet far less than 1 percent of these stories noted that the upper management has a substantial personal windfall to expect if it goes along with raises for rank-and-file workers. In most of these special districts, the board of directors is completely dependent on the staff for information and institutional history.

Instead of a sharp MBA type diagnosing this fundamental disincentive to control spending and district leaders adopting obvious reforms, we have a Senior Staff Analyst III testifying that automatic step raises on top of regular raises are the norm, and always have been, and the special district’s general manager nodding in agreement.

Fix is in from the top-down

There’s no need for a public employee union fix. The fix is in from the top-down.

Isn’t this important? Of course. But how often have you seen this explained? Just about never.

Thanks, state press corps. Thanks so very much.

By Chris Reed

When San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi took on the enormous pensions that were hollowing out the city’s budget in 2011, nearly all the big name Democrats in the Bay Area wouldn’t back him up. Led by Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein, they instead supported a much more modest reform that had been crafted with public employee unions’ input.

But have times changed in the most liberal chunk of California? Maybe. As John Wildermuth pointed out on Fox & Hounds Daily, the BART strike triggered fury in the Bay Area — with strikers, not management.

“Instead of local politicians joining union workers on the picket line, civic and political leaders pushing behind the scenes to have BART settle and little kids handing out cookies to the strikers, there was plenty of anger and it was all aimed at the union.

“Union leaders failed to recognize that it’s a new day in California. In the past few years, retirees have seen their nest eggs evaporate, people have been forced from their homes and workers who have been employed their entire adult lives suddenly found themselves with no job and no prospects.

“Sure, BART workers have gone four years without a raise, but that average annual salary of $50,000, $60,000 or $70,000, plus healthy benefits, sounds pretty good to people trying to raise a family on part time work or unemployment payments.

“To show just how strong the anti-union sentiment was, the day after the strike ended BART officials were forced to warn commuters not to berate, harass or threaten the workers who were back on the job.”

No longer partisan to question union members’ extreme pay, benefits and clout

That actually lowballs what BART workers make, according to the San Jose Mercury-News: