California's method of how not to solve a budget crisis

Thanks to The Gainesville (FL) Sun for this.


The state of California is having a budget crisis (not unlike many other states.) How California decided to resolve the problem, at least for the time being, offers a lesson in bureaucratic stupidity.

First off, the guv, the guy you know as movie actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, canned some 10,000 temporary and part-time workers. Secondly, Arnold "ordered the 200,000 permanent employees to be paid only the minimum wage of $6.55 an hour until the legislature passed a crisis-solving budget."

Oops!

About one week after Arnold's drastic moves, John Chiang, the State Controller, told the guv that his plan was in jeopardy. It seems that the "state payroll records could not be changed to accommodate the cut because they were written in the antiquated COBOL computer language."

The only people who know COBOL are to be found among a few of those part-timers that Schwarzenegger had fired.

La Dee Dah.