Within the job training world, there are those  writers who receive far more attention in the
media than they deserve (Robert Reich), and those that receive far less. Timothy
Bartik is among the latter. An economist with the Upjohn Institute for
Employment Research in Michigan, Bartik’s work is consistently characterized by
serious research and original thought.  Over
the past  decade he has written a series
of articles and book s on labor
demand policies, wage
subsidies, and  a national
job creation tax credit.  

Bartik’s latest work focuses on early childhood programs,
and their link to a region’s job growth. This work arises in part his own
experience as a school board member in Kalamazoo Michigan, from 2000-2008. In
this capacity, he had opportunity to observe pre-school programs, particularly
those focused on low-income families, in the context of allocating limited Kalamazoo
School District resources. 

Pension reform was already on the table here in California
before the Wisconsin public employee union protests, but now in the glare of
the national spotlight pension reform could become a major focus of the budget
debate. Governor Jerry Brown said he wants to look at public pension reform, but
he does not want to tie it to the tax extensions and weigh down the ballot. He
may no longer have a choice.

The Wisconsin standoff – with minority Democratic
legislators refusing to step inside state borders and create a quorum so that
the majority Republicans can pass the reform bill – represents a budget battle over
public employee benefits that will occur in many states across the country.
State budgets are being squeezed, unemployment is steady, services provided by
government are being slashed, and reductions in government employee benefits
will have to be part of the solution.

Unions are portraying Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as some
sort of dictator for his proposals to demand more pension contributions from
public workers and to roll back collective bargaining. Conservatives are
hailing him as brave.

But, judging
by the details of his proposal, Walker may be a wimp.

Walker’s
pension rollback is particularly hollow because it exempts the group most
responsible for the mounting pension obligations in his state and around the
country: law enforcement. Cops and firefighters are specifically exempt.

If that
sounds familiar to Californians, it should. Meg Whitman talked tough on
pensions, but also didn’t apply her proposals for pension reforms to law
enforcement. The difference: her opponent and the media called her on it.
Walker has gotten a free pass, at least on this point.

Winston Churchill is famous for commenting that democracy is
the worst system of government, except for all the others.  Well, for those critics of reapportionment by
legislation, we may have stumbled on something worse-reapportionment by the
clueless.

Let me stipulate that I am not a cheerleader for leaving
reapportionment solely in the hands of legislators. I think that the last
incumbents-only reapportionment was a big mistake.  That said, this cure may be worse than the
disease.

Reapportionment is complex and tricky stuff.  It’s easy to draw compact districts with
equal population, but those districts are likely to result in the
disenfranchisement of some constituencies and wholesale disregard for Voting
Rights Act standards.  Following
municipal and county boundaries sounds good but may end up leaving some
socio-economic groups stranded in districts where they have no voice.

With Wisconsin’s Governor and Republican legislators trying to repeal the state’s collective bargaining law for public-employee unions, as well as requiring state workers to pay some of their pension costs, Sacramento’s former head of labor relations, Dee Contreras, is now trying to organize a labor union of city managers and other highly-compensated administrative workers.

The practice of former city managers and upper management city executives crossing over to the other side of the negotiating table appears to be growing, despite the strong push back by voters and private sector.

Contreras retired in December right before her department was consolidated into the city’s human resources department.

Targeting upper management, assistant city managers, investigators, administrative analysts and staff aides, as well as the city attorney, a list of the jobs that Contreras plans on including in the new union are available here.

Under the shadow of the public employee protests roiling Wisconsin, the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility and other non-profit groups held a one-day "Boot Camp" tackling the issues of benefits to public employees in California.

While the major Wisconsin issue of repealing collective bargaining for public workers was not on the Boot Camp agenda, the meeting dealt with the costs of public employee benefits and the burden they will impose on local and state government budgets.

The Boot Camp was a working session for the 200 attendees in Irvine and 350 following online made up of local government public officials and others interested in the issue, not a rally against public employees. "This is not partisan and not ideological, this is based on numbers," said Jack Dean, the publisher of the website Pension Tsunami, which gathers information around the country on the public pension issue.

Dean said the system has to be fixed for both the worker and the taxpayers. Current employees will lose benefits if nothing is fixed, he said, and it is unfair to taxpayers because they have to guarantee the benefits.

The left wing, big government group Next
10 has for some time touted their clever online survey – "The California Budget Challenge — How will YOU balance the
budget?" It is a sophisticated
scam. 

 It is based on a logical
fallacy – in this case, what logicians call a "false dilemma."  According to Wikipedia, a
false dilemma is also known as a "false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, fallacy of false choice,
black and white thinking or the fallacy of exhaustive
hypotheses."

While the Next 10 online survey is sophisticated in format – replete with
interactive pie charts and a bit dazzling to the layman – when all is said and done,
essentially only two major choices are offered:

1.  Raise taxes
2.  Cut services

Doesn’t it make you groan when smart people do dumb things?

I’m thinking of Andrew Puzder, chief executive of CKE Restaurants Inc., the Carl’s Jr. chain. For a smart guy, he’s made some dumb statements lately.

It started with a Jan. 31 article in the Dallas Morning News in which Puzder said he was about to meet with Texas Gov. Rick Perry to discuss the possibility of moving the headquarters of his Carpinteria company and about 500 employees to Dallas, Austin or San Antonio.

“The discussions will get kicked off in the next couple of days on a more serious level,” he was quoted as saying.

He got in a few jabs at the Golden State. Puzder told the paper it’s “easier to open a restaurant in Shanghai than in California,” and that he is drawn to Texas’ business-friendly atmosphere and the prospect of a 10 percent pay raise, thanks to the state’s lack of an income tax.

State Senate Democrats have introduced legislation ordering every state agency to:

(a) Review all regulations adopted by or applying to
the agency,

(b) Identify any regulations that are duplicative,
overlapping, inconsistent, or out of date, and

(c) Amend or repeal regulations to eliminate
duplication or inconsistencies.

About time, right?

Given the depth of California’s economic slump and
urgency to improve our competitiveness, we can hope that this effort might lead
to a serious overhaul of existing regulations. But based on past experience, it
will take much more than passing a bill to accomplish this objective.