California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (and one-time romantic partner of Mirthala Salinas) shows exactly how to make things work in California. He and his cronies have been working on a bill to overhaul healthcare in California. In this state, “overhaul” is code for “let’s take care of ourselves and our buddies in one big sweeping bill.” During the process, two influential unions donated more than $1 million to Nuñez’s initiative:

…the unions received three years of increases in state funding of health insurance for tens of thousands of workers who provide in-home care for the elderly, blind and disabled.

The legislation as approved gives unions unilateral authority to create and operate trust funds to provide employee healthcare, taking the power to negotiate away from the county agencies that employ the workers. The amendment was sought by the Service Employees International Union.

Another perk the unions negotiated allocates $25 million a year for a “Workforce Development Program Fund” that would provide retraining for their members employed at county hospitals and clinics.

That’s a pretty amazing return for $1 million.

In response to charges that he gave away the state to organized labor, Nuñez’s people responded that it was “give and take”, presumably this means give the unions what they want and take $1 million in return.

Said Jerry Flanagan, healthcare policy director for the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, “It’s really remarkable, in terms of the express aiming of this money toward two particular unions.”

The measure will be on the November ballot which will presumably involve even more ‘give and take’. According to LAT’s George Skelton, “Combine declining tax revenue with escalating medical costs and that’s a formula for a busted program. Universal healthcare in California will be looked back upon as a cruel hoax that raised false hopes and finally had to be abandoned, making the public even more cynical of Sacramento.” Bingo.

While on the topic of Nuñez’s indebtedness to unions, they have also been providing big donations to Nuñez’s initiative campaign to change the state’s term limits law. The American Federation has given $610,633, most of it last month, and SEIU has given $1.1 million, half of it last week.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 5:55 pm by Insider and is filed under California Schemin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.