I am a salaried, exempt employee at a special district in California (i.e., government employee). Our manager recently required that all salaried employees begin keeping daily timecards, which is not a problem, but he has instructed us only to report 8 hours of work per day, regardless of how much time we actually work. My question is, is it legal to require your employees to maintain timecards that do not accurately reflect the hours worked?

There is no legal requirement that Exempt Salaried employee timesheets be kept at all. What rules that exist are all related to Non-Exempt employee timesheets. It is legal for an employer to require Exempt Salaried employees to keep time accounting records. I am not aware of any law that specifically prohibit the maintainence of false time accounting records for Exempt Salaried employees.

Having said all of that, I had an employer once in the 1980s who had exactly the same policy. I kept a photocopy of that memo at home, and kept an accurate copy of my actual hours worked at home. Since I was legally Exempt, that did not help me, but I could have documented both my actual hours worked, and the reason for my need to document actual hours worked at home if required. The main effect I can see of such a policy is to convince any judge that the all of the employer's records have been falsified.

I regard your employer's policy as probably legal but definately stupid. It has all of the disadvantages of not keeping records at all, with some added disadvantages not normally present. The same employer several years later under advise of their attorney changed the time accounting for Exempt Salaried employees to instead record "P" (for present) instead of "8" for hours worked. Better, although I still prefer recording actual hours worked for all employees. If some employee was misclassified as Exempt, the employer's failure to keep accurate time accounting records rarely ends up helping the employer should a claim be filed. And employees almost always overestimate their hours worked, even with no money on the line.