Pay cuts, pensions and telework: Our top 2020 California State Worker stories

The coronavirus dominated The Sacramento Bee’s news coverage during a difficult year, and readers of The State Worker turned to us most often to learn about changes to their pay, benefits and working conditions.

Readers also made time for stories on prison closures, state executive wrongdoing and a proposal to restrict who can be a police officer in California.

Below is our annual review of our most-read stories. A few are “subscriber exclusives,” reserved for those who support our work by subscribing to The Bee. If you don’t have a subscription, please consider signing up. We offer a special price for state workers.

Pay cuts

The most popular topic among readers of The State Worker was the pay cut the state workforce took this year. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his plan in May to trim pay by 10 percent in response to a projected budget deficit of $54 billion.

Unlike his predecessors, Newsom made no exceptions for public safety workers or emergency responders. He said the pay cut would apply to everyone, himself and his staff included.

After the Legislature backed the plan, Newsom’s administration negotiated deals with the public employee unions that represent state workers. The agreements, which took effect in July, reduce most workers’ base pay by 9.23% for two years while giving them two days off per month that they can use or bank for later. The agreements also suspend workers’ contributions to their retirement health care, making the pay reductions a few percentage points smaller.

Newsom didn’t reduce his own pay at the same time he cut state workers’ pay. When asked about it by The State Worker, he and other top state officials requested retroactive pay cuts. Most legislators kept their full pay.

Under the negotiated agreements, the state would have restored workers’ pay if Congress sent enough relief money by Oct. 15. Congress didn’t provide any additional aid money by then, nor did a new coronavirus relief package signed by President Donald Trump on Sunday.

Pensions

The stock market’s historic drop in March looked bleak for CalPERS, which saw the value of its investments quickly sink by $69 billion from a pre-pandemic high of $404 billion. Since then the stock market has rebounded and CalPERS’ investment fund is larger than ever. It stood at $442 billion on Monday.

The state Supreme Court issued a major pension ruling in July upholding the so-called “California Rule,” a longstanding set of legal precedents that have protected public pensions from reductions without corresponding new benefits.

The ruling, which focused on end-of-career pension spiking, maintained the status quo for state workers but resulted in reductions for some workers and retirees in a pool of county-run pensions.

Telework

California state departments rushed to adapt to remote work in March after the state’s Department of Human Resources urged officials to accommodate telework wherever possible.

Doing so required overcoming cultural barriers along with technological ones. Some managers still equate hours at a desk with hard work, and some neighbors still get suspicious when they spot state workers outside offices during work hours.

Newsom plans to make remote work a permanent option for state workers, and has repeatedly given direction to state departments to make that happen.

Problems at EDD

California’s Employment Development Department stumbled back into the spotlight amid this year’s historic surge in unemployment claims.

Despite major problems getting unemployment money to people during the Great Recession, the EDD lumbered along in obscurity for a decade before the pandemic refocused public attention on its shortcomings.

Periodic patches haven’t fixed problems with outdated computer systems. Misguided staffing decisions and problems routing calls made it nearly impossible for frustrated Californians to get help by calling the department.

Weeks ago, a new crisis emerged when county prosecutors from around California announced they had uncovered a widespread scheme in which prison and jail inmates filed fraudulent unemployment claims totaling up to $1 billion.

Closing prisons

Newsom accelerated his plan to close a state prison, announcing the state will shut down Deuel Vocational Institution in September 2021. He said he plans to close a second prison, but hasn’t said which one.

Closing prisons is one of the few ways to truly save a lot of money within California’s $16 billion-per-year corrections system. The Legislative Analyst’s Office came out with a report late this year suggesting even more aggressive action, suggesting the state close five prisons to save $1.5 billion per year.

College for police officers

We published just one story on a proposal from Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles, that would require police officers in California to get a four-year college degree or turn 25 before becoming officers, but the story resonated with readers.

State worker insurance prices

The State Worker studied CalPERS’ PPOs, HMOs and risk adjustment proposals so you don’t have to. We reported on some steep price hikes coming for the cheapest state health insurance plans, along with price drops for the most expensive plans.

The retirement system’s long-term care insurance plans also are in trouble, and policyholders face a 90% price increase over the next two years if they want to keep their benefits.

CDCR rectal exams

Hundreds of California correctional officers made troubling allegations in a lawsuit alleging the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation performed unnecessary and invasive rectal exams on men and women as a condition of the employees starting work for the department.

Official wrongdoing

Executives at the Board of Registered Nursing couldn’t catch up on nurse misconduct investigations, so they found a novel solution: they reassigned a bunch of cases to people who don’t normally handle them just before state auditors showed up, and then switched the cases back to the overburdened investigators who normally manage them, according to a report from the state auditor.

A Cal Fire battalion chief gave a $100,000 construction contract to his wife’s family, violating state rules, according to an audit.

Reassignments, office closures

Some state employees who couldn’t telework were assigned to new jobs early in the pandemic, including contact tracing. Some were given little notice.

Regular work was also disrupted by office closures that resulted both from the pandemic and from protests in Sacramento and other California cities after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on the neck of George Floyd, who died shortly afterward.

This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 4:55 AM with the headline "Pay cuts, pensions and telework: Our top 2020 California State Worker stories."