Here, from Senior Labor Rep Bonnie Morris, are the highlights from the March 4 meet and confer with DPA.

ACSS President Olin King on Dec. 23 wrote Gov. Schwarzenegger a letter criticizing his plan to furlough state workers two days a month. The governor's executive order, King said, "transfers the deficit to the backs of your 238,000 state employees." He asked the governor to rescind the order and to meet with him and the rest of the ACSS board members.

ACSS met with CDCR on Dec. 11. At this meeting, rather than pose new agenda items, ACSS asked CDCR to respond to all pending issues from the last meeting.

CalPERS announced today it has appointed Anne Stausboll, a former CSEA attorney, as the pension fund's new chief executive officer. Stausboll worked for CSEA from January 1987 through December 1992. She will be the first woman CEO to head the pension fund. For the past eightmonths, Stausboll has served as CalPERS' interim CIO. For four years before that, she was the system's chief investment operating officer. She also served as general counsel for state Tresurer Phil Angelides and California's chief deputy treasurer.

Chapter 513: ACSS Director-at-Large Frank Ruffino’s chapter invited all four CSEA affiliates to its October meeting in San Diego to meet with three San Diego-area Assembly members. It was Ruffino’s vision “to prove a point that the affiliates can work together even though we have diverse interests.” All three legislators, Marty Block, Manuel Perez and Anthony Portantino, emphasized they are committed to helping state workers, Ruffino said. "They were impressed by our unity and our commitment to good government," he said.

Ruffino chatted with Assembly Speaker Karen Bass at a later political function. Ruffino said Bass showed genuine concern for our needs and would like to meet with ACSS members. “She was really listening to us,” he said. (Continue)

The first month's numbers are in, and they are good. Our Webmaster reports that since we launched our new format a month ago, the number of visits to the site has increased by 20 percent and the number of page views -- when you click past the home page -- is up 46 percent. You're staying on the site longer, too. We appreciate your interest and support while we restructure this site, and we welcome your suggestions. Email them to lholderness@calcsea.org.

More Web update: You may have noticed we removed the "updated" date from the site. We are now dating each entry. The flaw in the previous method was that you couldn't know exactly what had been changed. Now you can see at a glance which items are new since you last checked. In our blog, the top news item will always be the most recent one.

Sometime on Friday we will restore the home-page access to the Legislative Action Center and the Member Benefits page. They have both been missed.

The ACSS executive board and staff, led by newly elected President Olin King, met Nov. 13 at the headquarters office to discuss the vision for the organization's future. The minutes from that meeting will be posted when they are approved.

Some of the points we talked about:

• Developing a vision statement that reflects our role as the preeminent excluded-employee organization.
• Increasing membership 5 percent per year. Some ideas: more contact with department heads, urgent outreach to non-SEIU bargaining units, a survey to learn supervisors' issues, establishing an "army" of advocates.
• Increasing chapter membership and participation with more interaction and contact.
• Encouraging district office visits. Keeping in contact with legislators is one of the most effective ways to make sure our issues are considered.

We welcome your own vision for ACSS' future. If you register and log on, you will be able to post your own comments on these articles.

Vice President Olin King was unanimously elected ACSS president at the Oct. 25 board meeting in Sacramento. Twelve-year President Tim Behrens is retiring from state service and stepped down. King is from Chapter 511 in the Los Angeles area. Director Arlene Espinoza, of Sacramento Chapter 503, was unanimously elected vice president. The next board meeting is Jan. 9-11 in Sacramento.