Posted by azBlueMeanie:
I have been warning you about this ALEC initiative for months. During the last legislative session there was Frank Antenori's secret plan to end civil service merit selection system for county employees, HB 2650, which singled out the state of Maricopa for exclusion from its provisions, clearly unconstitutional on equal protection grounds.
Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the bill, not because she disagreed but because Jan Brewer wants to be the Scott Walker of the West:
The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) has more. Brewer pitches personnel plan to lawmakers, but there may not be time:
Lawmakers have been briefed about a plan by Gov. Jan Brewer to remove state employees from the state’s merit system.
Senate President Russell Pearce said the Governor’s Office gave a draft of the proposal to lawmakers nearly a month ago. He said the state needs personnel reform, but the plan still needs work, and there may not be time to do it before the legislative session ends.
* * *
Details are scant about the proposal and the Governor’s Office did not release a draft of the plan that was given to lawmakers. But the gist of it is to remove “covered” state personnel from merit protection[.]
“The caucus is supportive of it. The problem is you’re trying to introduce something at the tail end of session,” said Sen. Ron Gould, R-Lake Havasu City.
* * * *
“Either you play cram down like we saw with the so-called jobs bill,” Gould said. “Or if you call us back into special session to do this you get the same effect.”
Gov. Brewer wants to eliminate the merit system of public employment for state employees, returning to the spoils system of political patronage and cronyism. Public employees would have an incentive to keep working for politicians and their party — as opposed to a system of awarding employment on the basis of some measure of merit independent of political activity. This bill is far worse than the attack on collective bargaining in Wisconsin. Gov. Brewer wants to be the Scott Walker of the West.
On Wednesday, standing before her corporate enablers at the ALEC Summit, Boss Tweed Gov. Brewer declared war on the civil service merit selection system. The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports Brewer prepares ’12 push for personnel reform - Arizona Capitol Times:
Gov. Jan Brewer is getting ready for a 2012 push to revamp the rules governing the hiring and firing of state employees.
The governor announced her intentions Wednesday at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s States and Nation Policy Summit. She said state personnel reform will be one of her top priorities in the 2012 legislative session and that she will ask lawmakers to pass a package of reforms (.pdf) that will consolidate the state’s personnel systems; improve management of the workforce; restructure the system for filing appeals and grievances; and modify human resources practices.
* * *
Brewer would not provide specific details of her plan, but told reporters after her speech that it wouldn’t be fundamentally different from a plan she floated during the 2011 session. According to an outline that circulated in the Legislature, the provisions of the plan would have included removing merit protection for all new hires and supervisors, prohibiting the use of tenure and seniority when laying off employees and tightening rules for placing employees on administrative leave.
The plan exempted law enforcement officers whose positions were certified by the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training board.
Brewer said she wants the state’s personnel system to operate more like the private sector. No private business, she said, would tolerate a system like the state has now.
The highlight of her speech: Brewer quoted former Georgia Gov. Zell Miller, who implemented a similar system in 1996, who blamed the state’s personnel system for “government paralysis” and for providing cover for bad employees while doing nothing to reward good ones.
Zell Miller. Seriously? The nut-job who challenged Chris Matthews to a duel is her role model? Jan Brewer is just as nuts as Zell Miller, and people had better wake up to the realization of that fact, and soon. Like batshit crazy Zell Miller, Gov. Brewer wants to "build that bridge to the 18th Century."
Recent Comments