Another part of the overspending is self inflicted by the voters of California who pass any bond measure that has a good 30-second commercial.
While digging into the state debt load recently, I was surprised to see that we are still paying back 1970 bonds that were authorized when I was in the sixth grade.
California has a total of more than $42 billion in general obligation bonds outstanding and another $61 billion that were already approved by the voters, but not yet issued, for a total of $103 billion in bond debt.
The payments on the issued debt are more than $6 billion a year and growing at 12.2% per year. That means before we pay $1 for anything we must first pay $6 billion for bond debt.
The largest part of the state budget is personnel. In that category the Sacramento Bee did a great service this month for the taxpayers and compiled a database of salaries by name and job title of all 367,680 full- or part-time employees who cash a state paycheck. www.sacbee.com/statepay.
This database includes every UC Irvine professor, state trooper, highway worker and clerk.
Needless to say, many state employees have blown a gasket that these public records, which were always available upon request, are now on a searchable database accessible to all Californians.
Did you know the 186 staff psychiatrists we have in the prison system make a base salary of $258,708 per year and that the 22 chief psychiatrists we have make $282,792?
We have 257 employees of the state Senate and Assembly who make more than $100,000 with the top earners breaking $200,000. That’s more than the legislators they work for get paid.
Our own UCI had 157 employees who made more than $150,000 base pay, with 28 making $200,000. You will note that I am talking only about base pay.
