The general consensus on this year’s General Council was that it was the best ever. It also may have been the shortest. With no more essential business to conduct, President Dave Hart adjourned Sunday night, eliminating the need to return on Labor Day.

Click here to read highlights of this year’s GC. For photos of GC, click here.

The State Worker blog reports this morning that San Francisco Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woolard tentatively ruled in favor of SEIU Local 1000, finding that state insurance code "exempt State Compensation Insurance Fund employees from the furlough." ACSS President Arlene Espinoza wrote a letter to the SCIF board demanding that any relief from furloughs be extended to its members, and the SCIF board supported ACSS' demand. The blog includes a link to the ruling and other resources.

Check out the California State Employees Association home page for information on General Council. The business agenda is here. General Council runs Thursday, Sept. 3, through Labor Day. Delegates to the council will be electing new officers and considering new resolutions.

We picked up this short item from today's State Worker blog: State workers in Utah have been working a compressed four-day workweek. They're still working 40 hours, and they haven't been furloughed. The change stems from the state's attempt to cut its energy bills. The result? A smashing success. Utah's energy use has dropped 13 percent, state workers are saving $6 million on their gas bills, and the state's greenhouse gas emissions are down by 12,000 metric tons, according to a report in Time magazine's Sept. 7 edition. Utah says it's getting calls about its 4-10 workweek from both the public and private sectors around the world.

Vice President Arlene Espinoza, right, was elected ACSS' first woman president at Delegate Assembly Sunday, July 12. She succeeds Olin King. Elnora Fretwell is the new vice president. The team of Arlene and Elnora is the first time two women have held the organization's highest offices. Both women are in Chapter 503. Terry Sutherland was reappointed secretary/treasurer, which is not a voting position. Frank Ruffino was reelected director-at-large and Carlos Chavez is alternate director-at-large, replacing Jerry Fountain. Full election results here.

As a special fund agency, the California Public Employees' Retirement System is not affected by the plan to pay some vendors and contractors with IOUs. CalPERS will issue cashable checks for all of its payments, including retiree pensions. To read the CalPERS press release, click on the headline above.

CalPERS has published the health care premium rates it has negotiated for state workers for 2010. The overall increase is 2.9 percent, the lowest in 14 years, the press release says.

This may be no surprise to state workers, but the California Budget Project has published a report, based on Franchise Tax Board data from 2007, that shows the income gap between the wealthiest 1 percent of Californians and the middle-income taxpayers has widened. The adjusted gross income of the wealthy has nearly doubled since the early 1990s, more than eight times the increase of the middle income earners. No surprise again: Average corporate profits more than doubled during the same period and almost none of it trickled down.

One state worker, in the face of pay cuts and insults, wryly defends the general public's misimpression of state service in a Sacramento Bee opinion piece.

In an opinion piece published Monday in The Sacramento Bee, the California Budget Project's Jean Ross urges legislators to start closing the budget gap by repealing recent tax cuts quietly given to some of the big and powerful corporations. Giving corporate tax breaks while closing parks and severely cutting education represents "misguided priorities," Ross writes. The CBC posted a short response on its Web site.

The California Budget Project has published a side-by-side comparison of the governor's and Legislature's budget conference committee's budget proposals. A Sacramento Bee story discusses the two proposals and and a budget Q&A explains, as much as possible, how we got into this fix.

A Sacramento Bee editorial is calling for a freeze not only on pay raises for state workers but also on the step increases.

Members of ACSS Chapter 512 joined other constituents of Sen. Abel Maldonado (at left in photo, with ACSS labor rep Tom Considine) for a June 12 luncheon that began at Hearst Castle and included seal watching in Cambria and a tour of the Piedras Blancas lighthouse. Maldonado, a Republican, broke with his party to cast the deciding vote for the 2009-2011 budget. “It was the hardest vote in my life,” he said. “At the last minute, I said to myself, ‘California first, Abel Maldonado second,’ and I think other people should have done the same.”  There will be cuts to come, he said, but he also predicts tax increases on such items as cigarettes and alcohol. He has a 17-inch stack of mail decrying the closing of parks -- which hold a "special place" for him -- and has met with disabled people who will suffer from the proposed cuts. “The state needs to move forward in a way that makes us solvent,” Maldonado said. “We can get some good reforms in the next couple of weeks and get this state on our way.”

Two of California's top pollsters say the May 19 special election was not a referendum against more taxes, as has been interpreted, but an order to fix the budget mess, according to a Sacramento Bee article. California voters strongly favor raising taxes on pornography, cigarettes, alcohol and people who make more than $1 million a year, the pollsters say. The real message: The governor and the Legislature need to avoid delays and pass the budget.

The CalPERS Health Benefits Committee has recommended an overall 2.9 percent increase in health care premiums for 2010 -- the lowest increase in 14 years. The full board will vote on the increase today. A CalPERS release says the lower rates are partly the result of reduced use of health care services and greater use of generic drugs as well as tough negotiations by CalPERS staff.