When California corrections worker Richard Krupp reported that prison overtime costs were skyrocketing to more than $100 million a year, he was assigned to read college students’ research proposals that took him an hour a week, reports the Sacramento Bee.
Krupp told a staste Senate panel yesterday that his complaint to a state employee-discipline board has not been resolved. Officials who allegedly retaliated against him have not been punished; and Krupp has spent more than $20,000 of his own money on legal fees.
More than half the cases that come before the State Personnel Board involve workers at the Department of Corrections and the California Youth Authority; the board overturns about 60 percent of punishments meted out to prison employees.
At the hearing, the Bee reports, a picture emerged of a slow-moving bureaucracy that often lets wayward employees off the hook for inappropriate behavior. Jeanne Woodford, the new corrections director, said, “Leadership is important…But I think systems are also important, and that’s one reason we’re looking at this new disciplinary process and ways to give it transparency so it is open for review by everyone.”
Link: http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/ca/story/8619215p-9547422c.html