Last month I was among the countless Californians outraged that the leaders of the California Assembly had decided to give a raise to some legislative aides at the same time the state is sliding into a fiscal abyss. The hue and cry was so great that within a day Speaker Karen Bass reversed herself.

Now the state faces what the Governator is estimating as a $21.3 billion budget gap if the May 19th budget propositions don’t pass (which they won’t). And here’s Karen Bass in today’s LA Times, still not getting why nobody people were outraged by pay hikes for staff aides:

She expressed frustration over the criticism she drew during last month’s salary-hike flap, which would have boosted the wages of about 10% of the Assembly’s more than 1,000 employees at a total cost of about $500,000.

“I regret the timing,” she said of the wage increases. But, she added, “I felt after cutting $15 million … spending $500,000 was a reasonable approach.”

I’ve met Ms. Bass and I like her, and I know this is a difficult job she’s got. But how one can rise this far in politics this quickly (she was first elected to her seat only five years ago) and not understand that this is no climate for bureaucratic pay raises is beyond me.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Politics, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.