California Election 2006 Watch: Schwarzenegger Drops His Fight with California Nurses
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks at a news conference in Sacramento, California, November 10, 2005.
The ASSociated Press has Schwarzenegger Drops Nurse-Staffing Fight
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has ended a yearlong fight with California nurses over hospital staffing levels after a bitter feud that escalated when he boasted, “I’m kicking their butts.”
Acting on behalf of the governor, Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed a motion late Thursday ending a legal battle over a new state rule requiring one nurse for every five patients. For the past year, Schwarzenegger had been trying to block the rule in favor of a 1-to-6 ratio.
Schwarzenegger’s office referred calls on the matter to the state
Department of Health and Human Services, where spokeswoman Sabrina Demayo Lockhart said that in the 10 months the 1-to-5 rule has been in place, hospitals have been able to adapt, “so we’re going to move forward.”
The Governator has become an Accomodator.
Look for more hospital emergency rooms to close because hospitals will NOT be able to staff them at the California mandated 1:5 ratio and YOUR ambulance being turned away from a hospital because a nurse called in sick.
Nurses union Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro called the decision “an enormous victory” because Schwarzenegger “is going to stop going after registered nurses and patient ratios.”
The governor’s action came two days after California voters rejected all of his proposed government-overhaul initiatives and on the same day he took “full responsibility” for the election debacle.
The 1-to-5 staffing ratio was not among the issues decided at the ballot box Tuesday but has been a long-sought goal of the 60,000-member California Nurses Association. Schwarzenegger sided with the hospital industry in opposing the 1-to-5 ratio, citing the added financial burden and the nation’s nursing shortage.
Tensions between the governor and the nurses union escalated in December 2004, when he labeled the union a special interest and said he was “kicking their butts.”
Since then, the union has attacked Schwarzenegger in TV commercials, on freeway billboards and at nearly every public event he held, including fundraisers in New York and Boston.
Registered nurses from Chicago protest against California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger outside Fenway Park before the start of the Rolling Stones concert in Boston, Massachusetts, August 21, 2005. Nurses gathered in Boston to protest against Schwarzenegger who was attending a Rolling Stones concert in Fenway Park. The nurses were protesting against proposed ballot initiatives in California.
So, as Californians healthcare suffers and hospitals and clinics close perhaps they will remember that the Governor acquiesced his responsibilities so he would no longer have to anticipate election year protests.
Pitiful…..you know, Governor, if you were going to change this policy why didn’t you do it last summer before the California Special Election campaign began? If it was bad policy then, what has changed? Well, we know………
Oh, and another question, Governor……there is a nursing shortage in California.
Where are these nurses coming from?
NA Director Rose Ann DeMoro celebrates victorious “Aloha Arnold Party” at Trader Vic’s Restaurant in the Beverly Hilton on election night. View more photos.
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