Legislature passes budget, leaves town. The Legislature this week sent the Governor a record-size budget for the fiscal year that started last Friday. With that business out of the way, they head back to their districts for a one-month recess before returning August 1 to finish the last year of their 2-year session. They have until midnight on August 31 to wrap things up, at which point they adjourn for the year. With an extraordinary number of open legislative seats this year, owing to large numbers of retirements and the impacts of redistricting, the Assembly and Senate that will be sworn-in in December will bring a lot of fresh faces.
Legislature’s recess doesn’t slow down bargaining. The teams met Thursday last week and will meet Thursday this week to continue work on a successor MOU. Though the prior CASE MOU expired on June 30, rights and protections continue in force until a successor agreement is reached.
Waiting on CalHR, again. The ball remains firmly in CalHR’s court on the topics of highest priority to CASE Members like salary and paid family leave. What’s the hold up? We’re not sure, but we hope they are taking a long, hard look at the vacancy impact, salary comparison, and Unit 2 demographic information discussed so far at the table – it all points to a recruitment and retention problem CalHR can solve by offering a deal that appropriately values CASE Members’ contributions to California.
What’s next? The Member Action Survey closed last week, and CASE staff is analyzing the results to see which actions CASE Members will be most likely to use in aid of sending a clear message to the Newsom administration. Stay tuned for more.
The parties return to the table next Thursday.