Government Employees

When a security firm contracting with Los Angeles County went bankrupt earlier this year, hundreds of workers were not paid for their hours guarding county clinics, Sheriff's Department buildings and Fire Department facilities. On Tuesday, Supervisor Gloria Molina urged county lawyers to find a way to pay them about $200,000 in wages she said they are due, prompting a bitter exchange among her colleagues. International Services Inc., which placed nearly 800 guards in county facilities, filed for bankruptcy after its president and chief executive, Ousama "Sam" Karawia, 45, was charged with multiple counts of conspiracy, grand theft, making false statements and insurance fraud.

When Anthony Colannino, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, looked at his pay stub for the last two weeks of June, he assumed there must have been a mistake: He had received only $271.98, more than $3,000 less than the county usually pays him. No mistake, Colannino was told when he queried the amount. He had been docked 11 days' pay because he had exceeded the amount of time his office would allow him to work in the California State Military Reserve.

Staff shortages are forcing tens of thousands of state workers employed at prisons and other around-the-clock institutions to report to work on their furlough days -- and the state is paying them with what amount to IOUs that will be costly to taxpayers, according to a Senate report to be released today. In the long run, the state will save far less than the $1.7-billion touted by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when he ordered state workers furloughed three days a month, the report concludes.

Three months into its fiscal year, Los Angeles still faces a $400-million budget shortfall that could torpedo Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's effort to allow 2,400 city workers to retire ahead of schedule, forcing the City Council to reconsider layoffs. Budget advisors met privately with council members over the last week to stress the magnitude of the financial woes -- the city is spending $1 million per day more than it receives in revenue -- and urge them to take decisive action.

Brad Levenson and Tony Sears spent Thursday fielding congratulatory calls from gay rights supporters around the nation for their success in getting a federal judge to call into question the legality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S.

For most working Californians, I suspect, the holiday season is only a distant memory. They're back deep into the grind. And it will be months before there's another company-paid official holiday, Memorial Day. For state employees, however, the holiday season never seems to end. Their first relief from the back-to-work grind will come Monday, Martin Luther King Day. In February, they'll get two holidays four days apart: Lincoln's birthday and Washington's birthday.

Eager to cement the security gains of last year's troop buildup, the U.S. military has shifted its strategy from the streets to the corridors of power in a high-stakes effort to persuade Iraq's wary Shiite leaders to put thousands of predominantly Sunni men, many of them former insurgents, on the government payroll. More than 70,000 members of mostly Sunni Arab groups now work for American forces in neighborhood security programs.

Los Angeles County has paid more than $4 million in the last two years to settle discrimination, harassment and wrongful-termination claims brought by county employees but has never publicly justified the settlements. County supervisors, saying that taxpayers deserved to know why they settle other lawsuits, last year voted to publicly disclose legal evaluations written by county lawyers for each case. But they allowed the attorneys to make an exception for employee-related settlements.

San Bernardino County prosecutors charged two brothers with bribery Thursday after they allegedly slipped an envelope containing $15,000 in cash to the chief of staff for county Supervisor Josie Gonzales. Arshak Kouladjian, 53, of Glendale and Vartan Kouladjian, 45, of Pasadena pleaded not guilty in a San Bernardino County courtroom Thursday to a single count each of felony bribery of a ministerial officer.

When Reed Royalty endorsed Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen's reelection campaign last month, he praised her for seeking to reduce pension benefits for sheriff's deputies "that may be unconstitutional." It was a logical comment for Royalty, an advocate of low taxes and limited government who is president of the Orange County Taxpayers Assn.