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

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In an address broadcast from theState Capitol, Linglr also said she would scale back free Medicaidc benefits to low-income adults and said the state wouldc delay paying some of its largert bills until July. The governor is also askinh the Judiciary, the Legislature, and the Officse of Hawaiian Affairs to implement equivalent furlough days or restrictrtheir budgets. Hawaii law does not allowe ordering furloughs for the Departmentof Education, the Universityy of Hawaii or the Hawaii Health Systemss Corporation, but Lingle said their spending will be restrictee in an amount equivalentr to the three-days-per-month furlough. The furloughs, which start July 1, amount to about a 13.
8 percenty pay cut, or about $5,500 for a workef making $40,000 a year. As with Lingle does not have to negotiate the furloughsx with any of the unions representingstate workers. Lingle has said she doesn’ty want to lay off workers becausse of the disruptive effec of contract rules that would enable senio r workersto “bump” junior workers, even if they workecd in different state agencies. The furloughs will save $688 Lingle said the savings are neededr to close a gapof $730 million between now and June 30, as forecast by the state’s Councilk on Revenues May 28. All told, 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 employees to realize an equivalent amount of savings,” Linglse said. The state has about 46,00 workers, including 21,000 employeesw of the Departmentof Education. Lingle blamed the fiscal shortfall on thelingering recession, rising unemployment, droppingt visitor arrivals, a decline in privats building permits, a doubling of and record bankruptcy levels. The states Legislature ended its session last montuh 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 those measures were overriddehn bymajority Democrats, said she would not ask for additionaol tax increases. She also rejected calls for legalizing gambling. Lingle noted that 70 percent of statd operating funds go to labor costs and that the statwe had provided employee wage increase of betwee 16 and 29 percent over the past fouryearxs “when our economy was thriving.
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