Orange
County Register's 'Great Moments in Waste'. In an April 4 editorial, the Orange County Register listed what it
called "Great Moments in Waste" for the past year, as follows:
·
More
than 120 Los Angeles County employees filed "falling-out-of-chair"
workers' compensation claims. Meanwhile, tax-paid doctors allegedly worked 24
hours a day for weeks at Martin Luther King-Drew Medical Center, where there
also were thousands of reports of employees who "earned overtime equal to
half or more of their pay, and hundreds doubled or tripled their
salaries."
·
The city
of Los Angeles' budget included $290,000 for artists in residence and $550,000
for calligraphers to decorate proclamations.
·
Orange
County's own Great Park's cost soared to more than $1 billion, helped along by
a $5 million tethered helium balloon, a $300,000 visitor-center tent that cost
$75,000 a year just to clean and $14,000 for a series of orange dots painted
along the park's entrance road, the Los
Angeles Times said.
·
Even
after the Berkeley Housing Authority discovered it had paid federal rent
subsidies for 15 dead tenants up to two years, the 14 employees involved were
protected by union contracts so had to be transferred rather than fired.
·
The San
Francisco Municipal Railway public-transit system threw two big parties costing
taxpayers $158,000 to celebrate the opening of a new line, despite being well
over budget with $154 million in alterations that included misdesigned
stations, structural steel supports hanging into the roadway, suspect concrete,
flimsy railings, rusting joints and a platform lower than track level.
·
The San Diego Union-Tribune calculated that
too little of the $50 billion allocated by the state for kindergarten through
community college makes it to the classroom. For example, San Diego Unified
School District spent 53 percent in classrooms. The statewide average was 62
percent.
Cal-Taxletter April 4, 2008
© 2008 California Taxpayers' Association. All Rights Reserved.