Opinion

California Leads The Nation In Money For Nothing

Lloyd Billingsley Policy Fellow, Independent Institute
Font Size:

A federal patent examiner recently made news for doing no work for 18 weeks while getting paid his full salary. In similar style, senior policy advisor John Beale of the Environmental Protection Agency told his bosses he worked for the CIA and did no work for two and a half years, receiving not only his full salary but some $500,000 in bonuses. Those cases may be hard to top, but California is giving it a shot.

The massive California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) maintains 3,500 full-time employees who do little beyond drawing their salaries. This revelation emerges from a 2014 report by the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst (LAO), which notes Caltrans’ surplus of engineers who prepare and supervise construction projects. The news disturbs some legislators.

“It is not okay to continue having these people sitting idly by while we desperately need that money for transportation projects today,” assemblywoman Kristin Olsen told reporters. “There is absolutely no good policy reason to use taxpayer funds to pay 3,500 people to just be sitting around at a desk.” But Caltrans does it anyway.

The Legislative Analyst recommends cutting the positions. That does not please California’s government employee union bosses such as Bruce Blanning, executive director of Professional Engineers in California Government.

“The LAO approaches these issues in an almost childlike manner” Blanning told Andrew Holzman of the Sacramento Bee. Blanning opposes the cuts and recommends keeping staff on hand for future projects, when state or federal money might be available. So his union likes the idea of drawing a full-time paycheck for doing nothing, courtesy of California taxpayers.

Some legislators decry the waste and want Caltrans to hire workers on a contract basis. Blanning contends that it is contracting out that “wastes taxpayer money,” not the thousands of full-time workers paid their full salaries and generous benefits to do nothing.

Legislators and taxpayers alike might turn their attention to what Caltrans does when its full-time employees are not just sitting around. The new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge came in ten years late and $5 billion over budget, and remains riddled with faulty welds, cracked rods, corrosion problems and such.

State senator Mark DeSaulnier, now a congressman, held hearings on the bridge’s safety problems and heard whistleblowers call for a criminal investigation. The case was strong, but no such investigation ever took place. “There’s never been anyone in the management of the bridge who has been held accountable,” laments DeSaulnier.

Caltrans maintains the 3,500 idle employees in its Capital Outlay Support Program. A bill by state senator John Moorlach would increase the number of contract employees in this program by 5 percent per year, aiming for a 50/50 ratio by 2023. That shift might be a good start, but the proposed reform faces tough odds.

Like all government employee unions, Professional Engineers in California Government lobbies the legislature and spends nearly $2 million a year on political contributions. The odds are stronger that cuts will be few, if any, and California government will continue to pay thousands of full-time employees to do nothing.

Meanwhile, the patent examiner and fake CIA man are not the only ones in Washington paid to do nothing. If he is serious about accountability, congressman DeSaulnier might run a count on people like that.

Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow and communications consultant with the Independent Institute.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel