California laws enacted more than 30 years ago to protect honest peace officers from over-zealous internal investigations have become a safety net for bad cops. Laws that began as an effort to protect police and the integrity of their work expanded over time, giving more and more cover to officer misconduct.

The mandates – the most stringent in the nation -- have given troubled officers special privileges that make it harder to get rid of them and nearly impossible for the public to learn whether they've been adequately disciplined.Attempts to scale back those laws have met with opposition from California's highly organized police unions, who argue it could affect officer safety. -- Orange County Register

Elected Officials and Government has been afraid to recognize the clear truth.  Municipal or local government employment has been growing astronomically while the number of citizens per government worker has shrunk. In 2006 there were about 20 million government employees with a population of 280 million people (subtracting government workers) or one out of 14 people.

• According to a BLS report, compensation for private industry workers has increased by 6.9% between December 2006 and December 2009, compared to
  a 9.8% increase for government workers (state and local) over the same period.
  

An Alameda Superior Court judge has ordered the Schwarzenegger administration to cease and desist its practice of furloughing thousands of state workers who are members of the Service Employees International Union, Local 1000, offering the powerful union a huge victory as it enters 2010.

In a ruling handed down late Thursday, Justice Frank Roesch said the governor's reliance on provisions of the state's Emergency Services Act to order mandatory furloughs was flawed and illegal, saying "the emergency necessitating them was the failure of the Legislature to pass the budgets" yet the administration continued the furloughs even after the budgets were passed. -- Sacramento Bee