Million-Dollar Nurses Show California’s Struggle to Cut Payroll

“California taxpayers should be outraged,” said Lanny Ebenstein, an economics lecturer at the University of California at Santa Barbara and president of the California Center for Public Policy.

[Note: This article was originally posted on December 19th, 2011. The IFNM website was attacked by hackers and many articles are now gone from the archives. As a public service, IFNM is now reposting said articles.]

California has paid Lina Manglicmot $1.5 million since 2005, an average of $253,530 a year, to work as a prison nurse in the agricultural town of Soledad.

Manglicmot is one of 42 state nurses who each made more than $1 million in those six years, mostly by tapping overtime, according to payroll data compiled by Bloomberg News. Together, those nurses collected $47.5 million. In 2008, Manglicmot was paid $331,346, including $211,257 in overtime.

The extra pay that allows some nurses to triple their regular compensation underscores a broader trend in California, where government workers are paid more than in other states for similar duties and civil-service job protections hamper efforts to close budget gaps. Governor Jerry Brown said this week that revenue will fall short of expectations, triggering $1 billion in cuts to school busing, libraries and care for children, the elderly and the disabled, among other programs.

“California taxpayers should be outraged,” said Lanny Ebenstein, an economics lecturer at the University of California at Santa Barbara and president of the California Center for Public Policy, a research institution critical of public-sector compensation. “Taxpayers should insist that this is no longer acceptable because what government does is important and it’s important that government run effectively.”

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Original source.


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