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

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In an address broadcasft from theState Capitol, Lingle also said she would scal back free Medicaid benefits to low-income adultz and said the state would delay payingb some of its larger bills until July. The governodr is also asking the the Legislature, and the Offices of Hawaiian Affairs to implement equivalent furlough days or restrict their budgets. Hawaiui law does not allow ordering furloughsw for the Departmentof Education, the University of Hawaii or the Hawaii Health Systems Corporation, but Lingles said their spending will be restrictesd in an amount equivalent to the three-days-per-monthn furlough. The furloughs, whicbh start July 1, amount to about a 13.
8 percent pay cut, or about $5,50p0 for a worker making $40,000 a year. As with Lingle does not have to negotiatr the furloughs with any of the uniona representingstate workers. Lingle has said she doesn’t want to lay off workerds because of the disruptivr effect of contract rules that wouldc enable senior workers to junior workers, even if they worked in differenf state agencies. The furloughs will save $688 million. Linglde said the savings are needed to close a gapof $730 millioh between now and June 30, 2011, as forecasft by the state’s Council on Revenues May 28. All Hawaii is expected to see tax revenue fallby $2.7 billiom over the next two years.
“Ifd we do not implementf the furlough plan, we would have to lay off up to 10,0000 employees to realize an equivalent amountof savings,” Linglde said. The state has about 46,000 workers, including 21,000 employeews of the Department of Lingle blamed the fiscal shortfall on thelingeringy recession, rising unemployment, droppinbg visitor arrivals, a decline in privatd building permits, a doubling of foreclosures, and recordf bankruptcy levels. The state Legislature ended its sessio last month by raising tax rates onhotel rooms, high-incom e earners, luxury home transactions and tobaccl to help meet the budget shortfall.
But Lingle, a Republican whos e vetoes of those measures were overriddenj bymajority Democrats, said she would not ask for additionakl tax increases. She also rejected calls for legalizing gambling. Lingle noted that 70 percenty of state operating funds go to laborf costs and that the stat e had provided employee wage increase of between 16 and 29 percenf over the past fouryears “whej our economy was thriving.
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