From The State Worker blog: If watching the Olympics has motivated you to get back to the slopes, some Tahoe area ski resorts are making that a lot easier to afford. Boreal's "Frickin' Friday" deal for furloughed state employees offers $15 lift tickets on, of course, furlough Fridays (regular price: $47). Squaw Valley's $83 tickets are discounted to $49 on specified dates.

ACSS members, the deadline to reserve your room at the Holiday Inn Capitol Plaza for Lobby Day is March 12. To make your reservation, call the hotel at 916-446-0100. Be sure to ask for the ACSS discount. Lobby Day, our prime opportunity to introduce ourselves and our issues to legislators, will be St. Patrick's Day, March 17. Training is the night before. Call ACSS at 916-326-4257 if you have questions. Watch our Web site Lobby Day page for information.

CalPERS has scheduled only five retirement planning fairs this year: March 30 in Los Angeles; April 2 and 3 in Sacramento, April 8 in Redding and April 14 in Fresno. The retirement fairs offer information on planning for your state retirement and Social Security as well as several workshops. For locations, times and other information, check the CalPERS Web site.

The Sacramento Bee today published three cogent letters to the editor responding to an editorial that supported the governor's proposed pay cuts. The writers are not supervisors but their messages offer excellent food for thought. Scroll to see: "Good government isn't free"; "5 percent boost isn't 'modest' "; and "Bring back personal leave days." A fourth letter on pensions, "Pension cost exaggerated," was written by CSEA Retirees President Roger Marxen. To write a letter to the editor of The Bee, click here. Not every letter is published, but it's still helpful to let the editorial board know your opinion.

As if state workers hadn’t been hit hard enough: If the state budget doesn’t pass by June 15, your salaries could legally be cut to minimum wage. There is only one way to protect your paychecks: Support AB 1699. This continuous appropriation bill, by Assemblyman Ed Hernandez, authorizes the state to pay its employees their full salaries until a new budget is signed. As an ACSS member, you must urge your legislators to support this bill! It’s very important to reach as many legislators as possible because the bill requires a two-thirds majority to pass. Since it’s an urgent measure, it would go into effect immediately.The simplest way to write your legislator is to use the “Contact Your Legislators” section of this Web site. If you’ve accessed this link before, your representatives’ names will display. If not, type in your address and they will appear. Click on the “contact” tab for each rep and use the email link to send your thoughts.

If you are a member of ACSS and you haven't completed our furlough survey yet, please click on one of the links here and take it as soon as you can. The ACSS board approved possibly pursuing legal action related to the furloughs, and our chief counsel needs this information to develop this action. If you have problems with the survey, please let us know. We have been getting great response, but we need as much information from as many members as possible.

We will now be posting brief minutes of chapter meetings on our Web site. They are being logged under the "Newsroom" tab under Chapter News. We hope the exchange of information will benefit all chapters. Thank you to the members who are providing the information!

At its January board meeting, the ACSS board of directors unanimously agreed to pursue possible legal action related to the furlough of its members. We've developed a survey to help our chief counsel gather information for this potential lawsuit. You may have received this survey in your email; if not, please click on the survey link and answer a few questions here. The survey is short and your answers will be kept confidential. Please note: As referred to in the survey, "self-directed" furlough means you could choose the days you took your furlough time off rather than having those days determined for you (such as the first three Fridays the governor has now ordered).

Sending emails to your legislators or the governor, or national representatives, is easy with our "Contact Your Legislators" button, at left. When you press the button, you get a form asking for your address or Zip code. Once you've filled in the information, the email links to your representatives automatically appear. Write your reps today to tell them how you feel about the burdens the governor has placed on you and all excluded employees!

During 2010, ACSS members will be reimbursed for mileage used on behalf of the organization at 50 cents a mile. ACSS follows the federal guidelines for mileage reimbursement. To access our ACSS information blog items, click on "Info for Members" under "Blog Topics" to the left of the home page. Our information items are collected there for easy review.

The just-published Winter 2010 Today's Supervisor has been posted on this Web site under the "Newsroom" tab. Did you know your license plates were made at Folsom Prison? On the cover, you'll see a rare glimpse of the inside of the busy, colorful prison license plate factory, overseen by board member Carlos Chavez. You can read about this and other prison industries inside.

The ACSS board of directors, at its quarterly meeting Jan. 16, unanimously adopted a strategic plan that will guide the organization, the chapters and the members into a more dynamic future. We will report on this plan in various formats in the weeks to come. In the meantime, check out our PowerPoint outline.

In her column this week (at left), ACSS President Arlene Espinoza exposes the dishonesty in the governor's Jan. 8 letter to state employees and calls for ACSS members to write the governor and tell him how you feel about the unfair burden he has placed on his state's management team. Send copies to your legislators and please copy ACSS as well. We would like to share some of your remarks.

The Sacramento Bee has published a database of whom in state government interest groups lobbied and how much they spent doing it for the first nine months of 2009. Their total outlay? $206 million.

DPA is announcing a special dental open-enrollment period from Jan. 4 through Feb. 4 to allow state workers to add same-sex spouses to their dental plans. The couples must have a valid marriage license. If the same-sex spouse is not enrolled by Feb. 4, coverage will not be offered again until the next open-enrollment period. Read the DPA memo here (pdf). Read our earlier blog post on the eligibility of same-sex couples for state benefits here.