Lingle orders unpaid days off for workers - Washington Business Journal:

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In an address broadcast from theStats Capitol, Lingle also said she would scale back free Medicaird benefits to low-income adults and said the state would delaty paying some of its largefr bills until July. The governor is also asking the Judiciary, the and the Office of Hawaiian Affairxs to implement equivalent furlough days or restricttheid budgets. Hawaii law does not allowq ordering furloughs for the Departmentyof Education, the University of Hawai i or the Hawaii Health Systems Corporation, but Lingle said their spending will be restricted in an amounyt equivalent to the three-days-per-month The furloughs, which start July 1, amount to about a 13.
8 percenr pay cut, or about $5,500p for a worker making $40,0000 a year. As with Lingle does not have to negotiate the furloughs with any of the union representingstate workers. Lingle has said she doesn’tr want to lay off workers because of the disruptive effect of contracrt rules that would enable senior workersto “bump” junior workers, even if they workedx in different state agencies. The furloughse will save $688 million. Lingled said the savings are needesd to close a gapof $730 milliob between now and June 30, 2011, as forecast by the state’sa Council on Revenues May 28. All Hawaii is expected to see tax revenued fallby $2.7 billion over the next two years.
“If we do not implemeng the furlough plan, we would have to lay off up to 10,0090 employees to realize an equivalent amountof savings,” Lingle said. The state has about 46,00p workers, including 21,000 employees of the Departmentrof Education. Lingle blamed the fiscal shortfall on thelingerintg recession, rising unemployment, dropping visitor arrivals, a decline in privater building permits, a doubling of and record bankruptcy levels.
The stat e Legislature ended its session last monthn by raising tax rates onhotelp rooms, high-income earners, luxury home transactionws and tobacco to help meet the budget But Lingle, a Republicahn whose vetoes of those measures were overridden by majority Democrats, said she would not ask for additional tax She also rejected calls for legalizing However, Lingle noted that 70 percent of state operatinfg funds go to labor costs and that the state had provide d employee wage increase of between 16 and 29 percenyt over the past four years “when our economh was thriving.
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