Assembly Speaker John A. Perez (D-Los Angeles) said Tuesday that the state controller’s decision to dock lawmakers’ pay was “wrong” and would swing the balance of power in budget talks toward Republicans.

“I continue to maintain that the Legislature met our constitutional duties in passing the budget last week,” Perez said of the plan approved by lawmakers last week and swiftly vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Picture Above: Assembly Speaker John A. Perez (D-Los Angeles)

But state Controller John Chiang, a Democrat, said Tuesday the plan did not meet the voter-approved threshold of passing a balanced budget by June 15, the constitutional deadline.

“The numbers simply did not add up,” he said in a statement.

Perez said Chiang’s decision to reject the Democratic budget plan is “in effect, allowing legislative Republicans to control the budget process and I believe that’s a very unfortunate outcome.”

Chiang said that while he had no authority to judge the “honesty” of a budget, it is his job to “to be the honest broker of the numbers” and he said the Democrats’ plan had an imbalance of $1.85 billion.

Perez, in a written statement, said that “in the coming days” Democrats would “be taking additional budget action informed by the controller’s analysis.”

The new fiscal year begins July 1.

Read LA Times Article in full

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

June 20, 2011

The study’s authors, U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell, also forecast that the tab for maintaining the death penalty will climb to $9 billion by 2030, when San Quentin’s death row will have swollen to well over 1,000.

In their research for “Executing the Will of the Voters: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle,” Alarcon and Mitchell obtained California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation records that were unavailable to others who have sought to calculate a cost-benefit analysis of capital punishment.

Their report traces the legislative and initiative history of the death penalty in California, identifying costs imposed by the expansion of the types of crimes that can lead to a death sentence and the exhaustive appeals guaranteed condemned prisoners.

The authors outline three options for voters to end the current reality of spiraling costs and infrequent executions: fully preserve capital punishment with about $85 million more in funding for courts and lawyers each year; reduce the number of death penalty-eligible crimes for an annual savings of $55 million; or abolish capital punishment and save taxpayers about $1 billion every five or six years.

Alarcon, who prosecuted capital cases as a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney in the 1950s and served as clemency secretary to Gov. Pat Brown, said in an interview that he believes the majority of California voters will want to retain some option for punishing the worst criminals with death. He isn’t opposed to capital punishment, while Mitchell, his longtime law clerk, said she favors abolition. Both said they approached the analysis from an impartial academic perspective, aiming solely to educate voters about what they are spending on death row.

Alarcon four years ago issued an urgent appeal for overhaul of capital punishment in the state, noting that the average lag between conviction and execution was more than 17 years, twice the national figure. Now it is more than 25 years, with no executions since 2006 and none likely in the near future because of legal challenges to the state’s lethal injection procedures.

The long wait for execution “reflects a wholesale failure to fund the efficient, effective capital punishment system that California voters were told they were choosing” in the battery of voter initiatives over the last three decades that have expanded the penalty to 39 special circumstances in murder, the report says.

Unless profound reforms are made by lawmakers who have failed to adopt previous recommendations for rescuing the system, Alarcon and Mitchell say, capital punishment will continue to exist mostly in theory while exacting an untenable cost.

Among their findings to be published next weekin the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review:

The state’s 714 death row prisoners cost $184 million more per year than those sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A death penalty prosecution costs up to 20 times as much as a life-without-parole case.

The least expensive death penalty trial costs $1.1 million more than the most expensive life-without-parole case.

Jury selection in a capital case runs three to four weeks longer and costs $200,000 more than in life-without-parole cases.

The state pays up to $300,000 for attorneys to represent each capital inmate on appeal.

The heightened security practices mandated for death row inmates added $100,663 to the cost of incarcerating each capital prisoner last year, for a total of $72 million.

The study’s findings replicated many of those made by the bipartisan California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice in 2008, and a year later, when the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California researched the death penalty’s fiscal effects ahead of public hearings on how to revise lethal injection procedures after a federal judge ruled the state’s practices unconstitutional.

As with the recommendations in Alarcon’s 2007 report, none of the remedies outlined by the commission chaired by former Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp has been adopted by lawmakers or put to the public for a vote.

All of the examinations have pointed to a shortage of death penalty-qualified attorneys in the state as a prime cause of the delays in handling appeals from death row prisoners. At the time of the commission’s report, it took an average of 10 years for a condemned inmate to get his death sentence reviewed by the California Supreme Court, as required by law.

Michael Millman, executive director of the California Appellate Project, says more than 300 inmates on death row are waiting to have attorneys assigned to work on their state appeals and federal habeas corpus petitions. He says there are fewer than 100 attorneys in the state qualified to handle capital cases because the work is dispiriting and demanding and the compensation inadequate.

Death penalty advocates argue that the lack of attorneys qualified to represent death row inmates in a state with a bar membership over 230,000 is deliberate.

“Choking off the appeals is part of the strategy” of those opposed to capital punishment, Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, says of what he calls unnecessarily elaborate state court requirements for taking on death penalty cases.

In their report, Alarcon and Mitchell raise the prospect of costly new legal challenges to the state’s handling of capital inmates because of the dozens who have died while waiting for lawyers to be assigned for their appeals. Of the 92 death row inmates who have died since 1978, only 13 were executed in California and one was executed in Missouri, while 54 died of natural causes, 18 by suicide and six by inmate violence or undetermined causes.

Federal judges find fault with about 70% of the California death row prisoners’ convictions and send them back to the trial courts for further proceedings, the report noted. That could make the state vulnerable to charges of denying inmates due process, the authors warned.

The report also says the corrections department and the Legislative Analyst’s Office failed to honestly assess and disclose to the public what 30 years of tough-on-crime legislation and ballot measures actually cost.

“We hope that California voters, informed of what the death penalty actually costs them, will cast their informed votes in favor of a system that makes sense,” the report concludes.

Reporting from Sacramento — A Northern California man serving 68 years for a home invasion robbery is likely to be the first inmate released from state prison on “medical parole” under a controversial law passed last year meant to save the corrections department millions of dollars in treating and guarding medically incapacitated inmates.

On Wednesday, the Board of Parole Hearings granted an application from Craig Lemke, 48, who in 2006 broke into an elderly couple’s home, bound them with duct tape and robbed them of money, jewelry and firearms.

Under the law, inmates are eligible for medical parole only if they’re so disabled — paralyzed, in comas, hooked up to ventilators — that they no longer pose a credible threat to public safety. Officials would not provide details of Lemke’s medical condition, citing health privacy laws.

Lemke is the second inmate to have a medical parole hearing under the law signed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September. Last month the board denied the first request, from a convicted rapist paralyzed in an assault by other inmates, saying he remained a threat because he can still speak.

A spokeswoman for the federal receiver in charge of inmate healthcare said the state will save between $750,000 and $800,000 per year in security costs alone if Lemke is paroled. That’s what it costs to post guards around the clock on inmates who are so sick they require care in hospitals outside of prison walls.

If prisoners are paroled, the medical costs would shift to their families, if they can afford to pay, or to other government programs if they cannot. The expense of guarding the patients would be eliminated.

Should a parolee’s medical condition improve, the law requires that he be sent back to prison to finish his sentence.

Last March, authorities had identified 25 “permanently medically incapacitated” inmates being treated at outside hospitals who were candidates for parole. The receiver’s offices predicted Californians would pay more than $50 million to treat them this year, between $19 million and $21 million of that for guards’ salaries, benefits and overtime.

About half of those inmates have since been moved back into prison, receiver spokeswoman Nancy Kincaid said on Wednesday. The cost of treating patients at outside medical facilities is also falling, she said, because of a new contract with the hospitals.

The cost of providing security on the outside — typically two guards and one supervisor per inmate — has not changed, Kincaid said.

In addition to medical parole candidates in hospitals, there could be thousands of inmates inside prison sick enough to qualify, Kincaid said. The question is whether their sentences will disqualify them. Nobody sentenced to death, or serving life without the possibility of parole, is eligible.

The parole board still has 120 days to finalize their decision on Lemke. The board will hear two more cases on Thursday, and two next Friday.

By Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times

June 16, 2011

Gov. Jerry Brown’s solution to meet a court-ordered prison reduction is to shift low-level state inmates to county jails, but others say turning to private prisons is a good idea as well.

Advocates say state partnerships with private prisons, like the kind found in Texas and Florida, save money and reduce overcrowding.

“It makes sense for California policy makers to explore increasing the use of public-private partnerships given that many other states are saving on the order of 5 to 15 percent, sometimes more, and that they are receiving quality correctional services,” said Leonard Gilroy, director of government reform at Reason Foundation, a policy think tank advocating privatization.

“In a difficult fiscal environment, it would behoove California policy makers to look at all the options that are out there. When you look at the experience of other states, private correctional services are delivering on cost savings and delivering on meeting the goals of the states’ correctional systems,” Gilroy said.

Another advocate for California prison privatization is local Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Hesperia, who authored a bill to extend the state’s private prison housing contracts, which sunset on June 30.

Measures to curb crowding during the Schwarzenegger administration included sending hundreds of low-level offenders to private prisons out of state. About 9,600 inmates are currently housed in private facilities in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma. Donnelly said privatization should be expanded.

“When we want something done efficiently, and we want it done at the lowest possible cost, we privatize it,” Donnelly said.

“The California state government has proven that they cannot operate our system efficiently, and this issue has been going on for over a decade. I think we need to copy the Texas public-private partnership that shifts a large part of lower level offenders into private prisons.”

Donnelly’s bill was killed in March by the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

Despite the effort, a Brown administration spokesman said the current private prison contracts will not expire under existing executive order, with 9,600 state inmates remaining housed in private prisons outside of California. The administration, however, hopes to reduce the state’s reliance on out-of-state beds, said Oscar Hidalgo, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Prison privatization in California will remain a difficult nut to crack with heavy opposition coming from the powerful prison guards union and many lawmakers.

Loni Hancock, the Oakland-based Democratic chairwoman of the Public Safety Committee, said she supported the governor’s plan.

“I don’t believe we should privatize prisons in California,” Hancock said.

“One of the key elements of the governor’s realignment plan is to end the use of out-of-state prison contracts, including private prisons, and refocus state dollars on community correctional programs that would reduce recidivism.”

Ryan Sherman, a spokesman for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, said private prisons are bad for both public safety and fiscal responsibility.

“They have a horrible track record as far as making sure facilities stay secure, with an escape rate 20 times higher than the California Department of Corrections,” Sherman said.

Sherman said private prisons have higher rates of violence, higher staff turnover, less training, and the state retains all liability “when the (private prison) companies screw up and the taxpayers are on the hook.”

Gilroy said the characterizations from the union are “conjecture and scare stories.”

“The simple fact of the matter is, states and the federal government would not be using private prisons if everything that their detractors say was true,” Gilroy said.

“Bad things can happen in good public prisons and bad things can happen in good private prisons. These prisons are not utopias.”

Read more:http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_18257606?source=rss#ixzz1P5Ex49rP

Sacramento — California’s prison chief said Tuesday that the state can work toward meeting a court order to slash its prison population by 33,000 inmates only if the Legislature approves Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to extend and increase taxes.

Matt Cate, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, called Brown’s plan to send thousands of inmates to local jails instead of state prisons the cornerstone of the state’s solution to meeting the court order. Brown’s plan, known as realignment, was approved by lawmakers in March but has not been funded. Funding is needed so that the state can compensate counties for the extra costs of housing inmates in jails.

Cate said the state laid out its inmate-reduction plan in a court filing Tuesday to a three-judge panel overseeing the court order. The state told the court that Brown’s plan to house more inmates in county jails, as well as a number of smaller measures already begun, is how the state will attempt to meet the May 23 U.S. Supreme Court order to reduce the prison population over the next two years.

Republicans have balked at both the substance of the realignment plan and the way Brown wants to pay for it, but Cate said the plan – outlined in AB109 – is the only responsible way to meet the court’s requirements. The prison chief added that officials would move forward with the plan as soon as funding is approved by lawmakers, even though Brown has said he would also go to voters to ratify the taxes.

“If 109 is not funded and implemented, then we’re in trouble – I just don’t see any other way to get there,” Cate said. “I expect voters to support it. … If voters reject it, we are going to have to find another source of funding because it’s going to be tough to back off realignment once you’ve started.”

Budget deadline

Cate’s comments came eight days before the lawmakers’ deadline to pass a budget, and as Brown scrambles to find the four Republican votes he needs to pass a spending plan that includes taxes.

It’s not clear whether the comments changed anyone’s mind. Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber (Tehama County), dismissed Cate’s comments as an “attempt to put undue and unjustified pressure on the Legislature to go along with his dangerous realignment plan,” adding that he believes the court will view the plan as inadequate.

Other GOP lawmakers, who have slammed the court order as a major threat to public safety, nevertheless said there are “safer options” available to state leaders as they attempt to comply. Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway of Tulare said the state could construct new prisons through a bond measure approved by the Legislature in 2007, and send more prisoners to out-of-state private facilities in the meantime.

“The Brown administration continues to use scare tactics to push the governor’s dangerous realignment proposal,” she said in a statement.

Earlier, Cate had said the state plans to meet the order in part by using the 2007 bond money to build some new prisons and medical facilities, and by continuing to house approximately 10,000 inmates in private prisons outside California. But he added that he would like the private prison program to remain in place only for the “short term.” And as The Chronicle reported earlier this year, the state has not yet completed the construction of a single prison authorized under the 2007 bond initiative, though several are being built.

Supreme Court order

The U.S. Supreme Court last month upheld a lower court’s 2009 ruling that California must reduce the population of its jammed prisons to 110,000 inmates by 2013 The court found that crowding in a prison system that has held nearly twice its designed capacity for more than a decade has resulted in “grossly inadequate” medical and mental health care and has endangered guards as well as inmates.

Under the order, the state has until Nov. 28 to meet an initial goal of reducing the prison population – currently at 143,500 inmates – by 10,500. Cate called that a “big goal” and said the state may need some “flexibility” from the court on that first deadline. But he added that it would be “irresponsible” to ask for an extension without attempting to implement realignment.

Rebekah Evenson of the Prison Law Office, a lawyer for inmates who initiated the suit that led to the May Supreme Court decision, said Tuesday’s court filing “shows that the state has the ability to meet the court’s order in a way that both saves the state money and reduces crime.”

Compliance, she said, “is a matter of political will.”

Evenson wouldn’t say what the court should do if Brown can’t win enough Republican votes to fund his plan.

Realignment would require counties to keep nonviolent prisoners and parolees in jails and under local probation instead of sending them to state prisons. Under the governor’s proposal, the increased costs to counties would be funded by extending and increasing a handful of taxes.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/07/BARH1JQOVQ.DTL#ixzz1Oh1GCUyK

Prison officials have decided that participation in a gay pride parade is not on par with “entering a tavern, gambling hall, or nightclub.” They also seem to be saying that participating a gay pride parade isn’t a political statement.

That appears to be the takeaway, anyway, from an announcement prison officials made today in which they said that a prison guard will be allowed to wear his uniform in the annual gay pride parade in Los Angeles.

A little background: Andrew Johnson, a correctional officer at the California Institution for Women in Chino, Calif. asked and was denied permission to march in the West Hollywood gay pride parade this Sunday in his work uniform. But after he hired celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, the department abruptly changed course.

Here’s what they said (we bolded the most interesting parts:

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation embraces the diversity of the people of California. CDCR understands its responsibility to ensure that its officers and staff treat all Californians equally and encourages cultural awareness of the many facets of our state’s society.

CDCR did not intend to offend any segment of the population with its recent refusal to allow a correctional officer from participating in a Gay Pride Parade while wearing the department’s official uniform. The decision was made solely on an interpretation of an admittedly ambiguous section of the Department Operation Manual (DOM) as it relates to unauthorized use of the CDCR uniform.

Upon review, CDCR acknowledges that the DOM is outdated and requires careful revision. Therefore, Correctional Officer Andrew Johnson will be allowed to wear the CDCR uniform in the upcoming Gay Pride Parade in Los Angeles on June 12, 2011. CDCR apologizes to Officer Johnson and any Californian who may have been offended by the original decision.

It must also be noted that while CDCR is evaluating the ambiguity of its regulations, and permitting the officer to participate in this particular event, it is not CDCR’s intent to permit staff to wear the official uniform for individual off-duty events. CDCR will clarify this policy in the regulatory process.

At issue is a section of the CDCR manual that bars employees from wearing the uniform in any situation that might bring “discredit” to the department. Examples include “drinking alcohol in public, entering a tavern, gambling hall, or nightclub (except if necessary in the performance of assigned duties), participating in political activities, participating in demonstrations or pickets, engaging in selling or soliciting activities and engaging in any other action or behavior which reasonable persons would deem inappropriate for a uniformed peace officer, e.g., conducting nondepartmental business.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=90535#ixzz1OefEOKBy

According to www.Advocate.com, a gay police officer in California was told by superiors that his request to participate in the West Hollywood Gay Pride Parade was denied because it would bring “discredit” to his department.

The unidentified officer wanted to march in his uniform at this weekend’s parade. However, the department responded to his request, in writing, by saying his participation would be a “discredit” to the force, according to TMZ.

He will file an employment discrimination complaint based on the treatment he received from his supervisor.

The officer will be represented by attorney Gloria Allred during a press conference Tuesday at 11 a.m. in Los Angeles.

http://www.advocate.com

A sharply divided state Senate on Wednesday approved giving minors who are sentenced to life in prison without parole a chance to get out.

The bill by Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) would allow those under 18 to have their cases reviewed by the courts after 15 years with the possibility of having their sentences changed to eventually allow parole. Yee said the United States is unique in allowing minors to be sentenced to life without parole.

“These youngsters did in fact commit a rather horrible crime,’’ Yee told his colleagues. But he said young people are more prone to impulsive acts and have a better chance of rehabilitation. “This bill is about giving kids a second chance,” Yee said.

Republican senators including Tom Harman of Huntington Beach opposed the bill, saying it ignores the pain caused to crime victims and gives a break to criminals who have committed cold-blooded murder.

“This bill would say, ‘Oh, we should feel sorry for them and we should let them out,’ ” Harman said. “They are killers. They should be punished and left in prison for the rest of their lives.”

The Senate voted 21 to 16 to approve SB 9 and send it to the Assembly.

There are about  275 people in California serving sentences of life in prison without parole for crimes committed when they were minors, according to an analysis by the Legislature.

–Patrick McGreevy

By Josh Richman
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 at 3:16 pm in Jerry Brown, State Prisons, state budget.

By Jon Ortiz
jortiz@sacbee.comPublished: Tuesday, May. 31, 2011 – 12:00 am | Page 1A

The “pony riders” vs. “thugs” feud goes back a half-century, long before state workers unionized.

Ostensibly, the battle between the California Association of Highway Patrolmen and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association is about money. It’s really always been about what money represents: respect.

“It’s like sitting in a bar with guys in the Army and the Marines when the conversation turns to, ‘Who’s the toughest?’ ” said Tim Hodson, who heads the Center for California Studies at California State University, Sacramento. “Who’s more macho?”

Take the new contract negotiated by the correctional officers and signed this month by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Critics have blasted the deal as the comeback governor’s valentine to the union that spent nearly $2 million to help him win the election.

But when prison officers look at their patrol counterparts, they still aren’t satisfied.

“Longevity pay, bilingual pay, uniform pay … There are a lot of areas where we’d like to close the gap,” said CCPOA president Mike Jimenez.

Talk with either side about the tussle, and conversation starts with compliments.

Jimenez: “We respect the CHP as a brother law enforcement agency.”

Jon Hamm, CEO of the California Association of Highway Patrolmen: “I respect and appreciate the work that correctional officers do.”

But the derogatory shorthand each group has for the other is well-known: Prison officers are “thugs,” “prison guards” and “knuckle draggers.” Patrol officers are “traffic officers,” “AAA with a gun” and “pony riders,” a reference to their horseback patrols around the Capitol.

Hamm acknowledged that a rivalry exists, and that it can get ugly.

“The fact that everyone knows about this rift, I’m not proud of it,” he said. “I really don’t want correctional officers to believe that we think less of them for what they do. That’s not what this is about.”

Or is it? The CCPOA’s motto, “the toughest beat,” implies that all other public safety groups – including CHP officers – have easier jobs.

Ian Pickett, a Kern Valley State Prison sergeant, said he has “the utmost respect for what the CHP does,” and recognizes that every freeway stop is a potential shootout.

“With that said, the CHP often walks up to a window and finds a little old lady with a lead foot,” Pickett said, “whereas correctional officers always walk up to convicted, often violent felons.”

CHP officers tend to see corrections as the state’s version of local jailers: an entry-level position that isn’t about enforcing the law.

“The California Highway Patrol has always thought of itself as the elite,” said Glen Craig, CHP’s commissioner from 1975 to 1983. “And they’ve always been competing at the bargaining table and in the Legislature (with the CCPOA) for pay and benefits for their people.”

Pay for correctional officers and cadets ranges from $3,050 to $6,144 per month, 25 percent less than the pay of their patrol counterparts.

Their new contract includes one unpaid day off per month. The patrol contract signed last year doesn’t.

The disparities run the other way, too.

The CCPOA contract eliminates the 640-hour limit on leave time that correctional officers can accrue. Those hours can be cashed out at the employee’s final pay rate when he or she quits or retires, an exit nest egg that can be worth tens of thousands of dollars.

The state has always winked at leave caps in general and for prison officers in particular because institutions are short-staffed. Two years of furloughs aggravated the problem.

The result: CCPOA members average 19 weeks of leave on the books, worth a collective $610 million, a state analysis shows.

The patrol officers’ deal still has a leave cap, and an edict to adhere to it has upset some CHP officers and managers.

“We’re enforcing excess leave cap as best we can,” said CHP spokeswoman Fran Clader.

Long fight for equalityThe competition for pay and respect goes back decades to an era before the unionized state work force, when prison and patrol officers belonged to fraternal groups.

Most of the time, the prison officers have been on the bottom looking up.

In the 1950s, correctional officers complained that they earned less than fish feeders at San Francisco’s Steinhart Aquarium, according to Joshua Page, a University of Minnesota sociology professor who has studied the union.

In the 1960s, the CCPOA’s forerunner, the California Correctional Officers Association, sought legislation to enhance member retirements. The Highway Patrol group fought them.

“There was real resentment that the patrol didn’t help,” said Page, whose new book, “The Toughest Beat,” details the episode. “The correctional officers have always felt like CHP got all the respect and didn’t have to do much to get it.”

State prison officers in 1977 earned between $1,097 and $1,260 per month, about $200 less than CHP officers.

Not long after that, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that allowed state employees to organize.

Prison officers brushed off overtures from the Teamsters and other unions and organized themselves. They wanted to create an association focused on their unique interests, much like the Highway Patrol’s.

Under the leadership of Don Novey, the CCPOA became a formidable player in Sacramento by leveraging millions of dollars from members’ dues to reward its friends and punish its enemies.

It established an informal link between its members’ wages and patrol officers’ pay by waiting until the Highway Patrol’s union settled on a contract, Hamm said, then using the patrol deal to argue for prison officer pay.

“I complained about it for years,” Hamm said. “I literally couldn’t negotiate for my members because we were negotiating for their members, too. Everyone knew it. It was a joke.”

Although by law the patrol wages were supposed to be based on what police and sheriffs’ deputies earn in five large law enforcement departments around California, the state ignored the statute for many years.

The CAHP sued to re-establish the link and lost. Then Gov. Gray Davis formally recognized the tie in a five-year contract with the CAHP.

Symbolic victoryMeanwhile, the CCPOA and Davis agreed to set prison officers’ pay based on what CHP officers made. The deal fixed CCPOA members’ base wages at $666 per month less than what their patrol counterparts earned.

From 2001 to 2006, state figures show, correctional officers’ salaries rose by about one-third – right along with their patrol counterparts’ pay.

“That was a material victory, but it was also very symbolic,” Page said. “It meant that correctional officers were as valued as the CHP.”

The CCPOA’s deal expired in 2006 and with it the contractual tie to CHP officers’ earnings. Talks with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger deadlocked. Frustrated, the union a year later sponsored a bill to preserve the pay connection.

Hamm saw it as a make-or-break moment. If the bill passed, the state would forever calibrate his 6,100-member union’s contracts by what the deals would cost to cover the 30,000-member CCPOA.

After heavy lobbying on both sides, the measure stalled.

“People said we won,” Hamm said. “I didn’t see it that way. We were fighting for survival, not to defeat somebody.”

With talks at an impasse and the pay legislation dead, Schwarzenegger imposed terms on the CCPOA.

The “knuckle draggers” were on the bottom. Again.

Now, after several years without raises or even the increased employer contributions to health insurance given to all other state workers, the CCPOA is on the rebound.

Schwarzenegger, who once famously cracked that the only difference between prisoners and prison guards is which side of the bars they’re on, is gone.

“Maria’s not much happier to be rid of him than I am,” Jimenez said, referring to the former governor’s split with his wife.

His union is at peace with the Brown administration. Its new contract, which runs to July 2013, brings its members to health insurance parity in two years.

Jimenez, who turns 50 next month, had considered retiring. Now he’s hoping for re-election in August to a third and final three-year term – and to negotiate one last contract.

Asked about re-establishing the pay link with CHP, Jimenez said: “I’d like to do better.”

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/05/31/3664901/california-highway-patrol-prison.html#ixzz1Nw6vGjMj