Toss one of those plum posts to me, governor
My application has arrived in the governor's office and my fingers are crossed. If things work out, I could be joining the Schwarzenegger team before you know it.
Sure, the newspaper gig has been fun for 35 years, but the business is a bit shaky these days, and President Obama did ask that we all consider public service.
After watching the governor appoint termed-out legislators and other pals to six-figure salaries on various boards and commissions, some of which meet only once a month, I figured it was time for me to begin a second career.
I hope you don't think of me as a sellout. To be honest, my first instinct was to flog the governor for yet another in his long line of blatant hypocrisies. In addition to promising balanced budgets on time, and getting money out of politics, he pledged to abolish many of the state's 300-plus boards and commissions. His own review panel recommended abolishing 88 of them, including some of the same ones to which he's been making appointments.
I know there are those who think it's wrong that former legislators are getting plum jobs with little or no heavy lifting in the midst of a $41-billion budget shortfall, especially when the state's unemployment rate has soared to 9.3%. And it's true that, even as he's taken care of connected cronies, the governor has ordered 238,000 state employees to be furloughed two days each month or give up 9% of their pay, with layoffs a possibility.
And there are some gripers out there, like Kathay Feng of California Common Cause, who told me "It's not clear why, for once-a-month meetings, someone should be earning $132,000."
But come on, everybody's doing it. In recent weeks, as my colleague Patrick McGreevy has reported, former legislators Carole Migden of San Francisco, Greg Aghazarian of Stockton, Bonnie Garcia of Cathedral City and George Plescia of La Jolla have all hitched rides on Arnold's gravy trains. They'll be making $128,109 and up for saying "here" at monthly meetings of the Integrated Waste Management Board and the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.
And then there's former Assemblywoman Nicole Parra (D- Hanford), who was appointed to a newly-created post. She'll get $128,124 as director of the governor's Regional Development Initiatives. The announcement raised a stir when Parra didn't even seem to know what the job entailed and told reporters, "I'm 38 and could get a job anywhere, but I'm coming home to help the valley."
