Meet California's Crappiest Employees

​The state auditor this week released yet another edition of what could be titled "California Employees Gone Wild" -- part of a recurring series exposing the folks you pay to work on your behalf cheating, robbing, and gouging the state. It's an entertaining read; a variety of dastardly deeds are reported, the text is written with the straightforward moral indignation of the last moments of an episode of Dragnet, and, for the most part, all the baddies got caught in the end. Here's a highlight reel of crappy state employees, many of whom were done in by whistleblowers: 

• A supervisor at Herman G. Gtark Correctional Facility inexplicably assigned a pair of psychiatric technicians to clinical and administrative duties rather than tending to the needs of patients at the jail. This ended up costing the state a cool $110,797 over the course of two years "for direct psychiatric technician services not rendered."

• Over a six-year period, an inspector with the state division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal-OSHA) actually used the state's resources to perform other jobs -- teaching safety courses at a university and delivering speeches to professional organizations -- during work hours. From "August 2002 through October 2008, the inspector received nearly $264,000 from the state university and the professional association for teaching the courses and giving presentations," reads the audit. During that time, however, she was also paid nearly $70,000 for time she didn't bother to show up to work. And, yes, she drove to her other jobs in her state vehicle.

• For nearly five years, an employee of Cal State Northridge improperly allowed the owner of a pharmaceutical business and his trio of associates access to a school laboratory. In addition to using university facilities free of charge, the business owner apparently helped himself to university supplies. Did that business owner then successfully obtain patents based on the work he did in state-owned facilities using state property? You bet he did. The total cost to the state: Nearly $21,000. 

You can read the whole report here.

H/T   |   California Watch

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