With a gross salary of more than $333,000, BART's highest-paid employee last year wasn't its general manager, police chief or a worker who racked up gobs of overtime scrubbing grime from filthy train seats.

It was someone who did no work at all for BART in 2012: Dorothy Dugger, the agency's former general manager who resigned under pressure more than two years ago.

More states will create hybrid plans in the future because of the less-volatile contribution levels and the fact that the defined contribution components are portable for a workforce that is now increasingly more mobile, according to a new report.

While taxpayers dig pension funds out of their massive 2008-09 investment losses, the elected state and city comptrollers who oversee these funds, Thomas DiNapoli and John Liu, have used the public's pension investments to advance positions favored by labor unions and other political special interests.

The amount of money spent on lobbying in New York State during the first four months of this year has dropped significantly, a Times Union analysis of disclosure reports found.

A one percentage point increase in the unionization of a state’s public sector workforce is associated with an additional $78 of state and local government debt per capita. Meaning, if a state’s public sector unionization were to fall from 50% to 49%, that is associated with a fall in the public debt by $78 per person living in the state. Thus states with higher public sector unionized workforces are more likely to face higher levels of state debt. 

During a press conference this morning to tout his latest state budget plan, Gov. Jerry Brown said that he wants to hold down state payroll costs as his administration bargains new pacts with nearly a dozen unions.

Hawaii lawmakers took modest steps to address the state's record $25-billion in unfunded liabilities during the 2012 and 2013 legislative sessions but taxpayer watchdogs are critical that not enough is being done to address looming debts.

Hanging in the balance is a fix for Illinois' worst-in-the-nation pension debt that's approaching $100 billion and gobbling up money that could be spent on education and the state's large stack of unpaid bills.

There are always stumbling blocks and areas of disagreement that have to be resolved as the budget process advances. This year in Michigan, those topics include funding for roads, health care and education -- among other topics.

Legislators in the Florida House are set to pass a bill to end traditional guaranteed pensions for future state and county employees along with teachers.

Pennsylvania's private sector lost 113,600 jobs while state and local governments added 40,200 positions between 2000 and 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A compilation of websites presenting research and opinion on Pennsylvania's pension funds.

The NGA Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) has been tracking states' efforts to downsize and redesign government. In FY 2009 and 2010, a broad range of budget cuts and programmatic changes were enacted; some of the changes are temporary but most reflect a new normal for state government in the long term. This Issue Brief examines these actions and others that governors have been taking to deal with the austere budget reality.

Making public servants millionaires when they retire is not a bargain you agreed to as a taxpayer. The secretive Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP), which allows public safety officials to double dip, is yet another program created by our governmental leaders that is totally disconnected from the economic realities facing most Ohioans.

For the past two decades, higher taxes and Big Government have been the norm in California, with predictably disastrous results. Unless the load is lifted from California taxpayers, yet more thousands will lose their homes and jobs and savings, and another million and a half residents will go elsewhere to pursue their dreams.

There are three important lessons from the Wisconsin collective bargaining battles over the past eighteen months:

1. The power of the government-sector unions and their impact on elections is greatly overestimated. With the November 2012 victory for  Senate Republicans to regain control of the Wisconsin Senate,  government employee union  suffered their sixth  major defeat since March 2011.

2. When given a choice, government employees will quit their union in large numbers.

3. Government employees' salaries and benefits, particularly pensions, are financially unsustainable in most states and collective bargaining reform is needed.

This paper examines the ongoing fiscal crisis caused by health-care plans for retirees (known as "other post-employment benefits," or OPEB) in one of the hardest-hit states, California, and outlines necessary reforms that should come before tax increases or cuts to government services.

Public officials can help alleviate their budget crunches by offering competitive, not exorbitant benefits.

Advocating for collective bargaining reforms because unless base compensation adjustmentst happen, taxes will have to go up.

Ten ideas to cut waste and balance the buget without raising taxes, including more efficient K-12 funding, spending high education tax dollars more wisely and rein in state employee salaries and benefits.

Article presenting the elimination of the Oregon state income tax and the end forced unionism as solutions to both budget problems and lack of business growth.

the Goldwater Institute recommends that Arizona join North Carolina and other states that completely prohibit state and local government officials from contracting with public employee unions, requiring all employment relationships to be individually negotiated.

No area of public policy in Michigan is more in need of fresh thinking than the relationship between government and its employees. With Michigan's recurring government budget struggles, and with a new Legislature and governor espousing a commitment to performance, efficiency and accountability in government, a new labor law for government employees is imperative.

Paper suggesting a variety of ways to fixing state budgets in crisis, including freezing or slowing public employee salary growth, privatizing infrastructure and state operations, eliminating prevailing wage and placing constitutional limits on taxing and spending.