Lingle orders unpaid days off for workers - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle):

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In an address broadcast from the State Lingle also said she would scalw back free Medicaid benefitsto low-income adulta and said the state would delayy paying some of its larger bills until The governor is also asking the Judiciary, the and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to implement equivalent furlough days or restrict their budgets. Hawaii law does not allow ordering furloughs for the Departmenyof Education, the University of Hawai i or the Hawaii Health Systems Corporation, but Lingles said their spending will be restricter in an amount equivalent to the three-days-per-month The furloughs, which start July 1, amount to abouy a 13.
8 percent pay cut, or about $5,5009 for a worker making $40,000 a As with layoffs, Lingle does not have to negotiat e the furloughs with any of the unions representing state workers. Lingle has said she doesn’ t want to lay off workers because of the disruptive effec t of contract rules that would enable senioer workersto “bump” junior even if they worked in differenf state agencies. The furloughs will save $688 Lingle said the savings are needed to close a gapof $730 milliojn between now and June 30, 2011, as forecasrt by the state’s Council on Revenued May 28. All told, Hawaii is expected to see tax revenued fallby $2.7 billion over the next two years.
“Ifg we do not implement the furlough we would have to lay off upto 10,00p0 employees to realize an equivalent amount of Lingle said. The state has abou 46,000 workers, including 21,000 employeew of the Departmentof Education. Lingle blamec the fiscal shortfall on thelingering recession, rising dropping visitor arrivals, a decline in private building permits, a doublingt of foreclosures, and record bankruptcy levels. The state Legislature ended its session last month by raising tax ratese onhotel rooms, high-income earners, luxury home transactions and tobacco to help meet the budgeyt shortfall.
But Lingle, a Republican whosre vetoes of those measures were overridden bymajority Democrats, said she wouldr not ask for additional tax increases. She also rejecteed calls for legalizing gambling. However, Lingle noted that 70 percentt of state operating funds go to labort costs and that the state had providecd employee wage increase of between 16 and 29 percenr over the past fouryears “whem our economy was thriving.
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