Lingle orders unpaid days off for workers - Kansas City Business Journal:

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In an address broadcast from theStatre Capitol, Lingle also said she woulxd scale back free Medicaid benefits to low-incom e adults and said the state would delayt paying some of its largerd bills until July. The governort is also asking the the Legislature, and the Office of Hawaiianm Affairs to implement equivalent furloughg days or restrict their budgets. Hawaii law does not allow orderinv furloughs for the Departmen tof Education, the University of Hawai or the Hawaii Health Systems Corporation, but Linglde said their spending will be restricted in an amountt equivalent to the three-days-per-month The furloughs, which start July 1, amount to abourt a 13.
8 percent pay cut, or about $5,509 for a worker making $40,000 a As with layoffs, Lingle does not have to negotiatee the furloughs with any of the unions representing statw workers. Lingle has said she doesn’t want to lay off workers becauss of the disruptive effect of contrac rules that would enabl e senior workersto “bump” junior workers, even if they workecd in different state agencies. The furloughs will save $688 Lingle said the savings are needede to close a gapof $730 millionj between now and June 30, as forecast by the state’ws Council on Revenues May 28. All Hawaii is expected to see tax revenue fallby $2.
7 billion over the next two “If we do not implement the furlough we would have to lay off up to 10,000 employeesd to realize an equivalent amount of savings,” Lingle said. The stat has about 46,000 workers, including 21,00p0 employees of the Department of Lingle blamed the fiscal shortfall on thelingeringt recession, rising unemployment, dropping visitor a decline in private building permits, a doublingh of foreclosures, and record bankruptcyu levels. The state Legislature ended its session last monthj by raising tax rates onhotel high-income earners, luxury home transactions and tobacco to help meet the budgert shortfall.
But Lingle, a Republican whose vetoes of thosde measures were overridden bymajority Democrats, said she woulr not ask for additional tax She also rejected calls for legalizinh gambling. However, Lingle noted that 70 percentg of state operating funds go to labor costs and that the stats had provided employee wage increase of between 16 and 29 percent over the past fouryearw “when our economy was thriving.
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