Lingle orders unpaid days off for workers - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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In an address broadcast from theStatde Capitol, Lingle also said she would scale back free Medicaid benefits to low-incomre adults and said the state would delayg paying some of its larger bills until July. The governot is also asking the Judiciary, the Legislature, and the Offic of Hawaiian Affairs to implemenyt equivalent furlough days or restrict their Hawaii law does not allow ordering furloughs for the Departmenrof Education, the University of Hawaii or the Hawaiui Health Systems Corporation, but Linglw said their spending will be restricted in an amount equivalenty to the three-days-per-month The furloughs, which start July 1, amount to about a 13.
8 percentf pay cut, or about $5,500 for a worketr making $40,000 a year. As with layoffs, Linglwe does not have to negotiate the furlougha with any of the unions representin gstate workers. Lingle has said she doesn’ty want to lay off workers because of the disruptiv e effect of contract rules that woulf enable senior workersto “bump” junior even if they worked in different statse agencies. The furloughs will save $688 million. Lingle said the savingxs are needed to close a gapof $730 million betweeb now and June 30, as forecast by the state’s Councipl on Revenues May 28. All told, Hawaioi is expected to see tax revenue fallby $2.
7 billion over the next two “If we do not implement the furlough plan, we would have to lay off up to 10,00o0 employees to realize an equivalent amount of savings,” Lingle said. The state has about 46,000 workers, including 21,000 employees of the Departmentof Education. Linglre blamed the fiscal shortfallk on thelingering recession, rising unemployment, droppingg visitor arrivals, a decline in privatwe building permits, a doubling of foreclosures, and record bankruptcy levels. The state Legislature endef its session last month by raisinbg tax rates onhotel high-income earners, luxury home transactionsx and tobacco to help meet the budget shortfall.
But a Republican whose vetoes of those measures were overridden bymajority Democrats, said she wouldr not ask for additional tax She also rejected calls for legalizing gambling. Lingle noted that 70 percent of stat operating funds go to labor costs and that the state had provided employee wage increase of between 16 and 29 percenyt over the past fouryears “when our economy was thriving.
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