Public Officials' Pay

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LA City officials are under attack for salaries much higher than their counterparts elsewhere. The LA School District, with its million students, staff of 100,000 and budget of almost 8 billion, pays its elected board members just 24,000 dollars a year. Do we get the officials we deserve for the price we pay? How does public service measure up to comparable jobs in the private sector? We ask school board member Vicki Castro, former state Senator Art Torres, a spokesman for Mayor Riordan, and others.
  • Newsmaker: Energy Crisis and Stage 3 Alert - California is again facing potential brownouts or rolling blackouts. Yesterday's storm disabled a nuclear plant and caused Cal Poly Pomona to send home 19,000 students and faculty in an attempt to save energy. Steve Maviglio, press secretary for Gray Davis, says the Governor is doing all he can to resolve the crisis.
  • Reporter's Notebook: Ginger...the High-Tech What? - Harvard Business School Press just paid 250,000 for a book on an invention known only as "Ginger." Nobody knows what it is, but it's being touted as being able to change the world and make its inventor richer than Bill Gates. Andrew Leonard, of Salon.com, tells us more about "the hurricane of hype" that's got high-tech gurus raving.

Credits

Host:

Warren Olney

Producer:

Frances Anderton