PolitiCal Roundup: California job czar? Police and fire retirement shenanigans

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

-- Government workers owe more than $13 million in loan repayments to the state of California, and the state seems to not have an effective means of making taxpayers whole.

-- Gavin Newsom needs something to do, observes Times’ columnist George Skelton. So why not let the lieutenant governor be the state’s economic-development czar?

-- Police and firefighters have been exempted from various recent schemes to roll back benefits for public employees, including from Wisconsin’s controversial new law. But an audit in San Jose showed it’s exactly these vaunted public-safety workers who milk the system:

More than two-thirds of firefighters in that city retire due to so-called disabilities -- securing themselves a hefty tax break -- most without apparent cause, the report found. Others pad their wallets by double-dipping into worker’s compensation and disability funds.