Lingle orders unpaid days off for workers - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

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In an address broadcast from the State Lingle also said she would scale back free Medicaifd benefitsto low-income adults and said the statew would delay paying some of its larger bill s until July. The governor is also askin g the Judiciary, the Legislature, and the Office of Hawaiiann Affairs to implement equivalent furlough days or restric ttheir budgets. Hawaii law does not alloew ordering furloughs for the Department of the University of Hawaii or the Hawaiui HealthSystems Corporation, but Lingle said their spendinyg will be restricted in an amount equivalen to the three-days-per-month furlough. The furloughs, whicg start July 1, amountr to about a 13.
8 percent pay cut, or aboutf $5,500 for a worked making $40,000 a year. As with layoffs, Lingle does not have to negotiate the furloughs with any of the unionsa representingstate workers. Lingle has said she doesn’t want to lay off workera because of the disruptive effecy of contract rules that would enabl senior workersto “bump” junior even if they worked in different statd agencies. The furloughs will save $688 million. Linglde said the savings are needed to close a gapof $730 milliob between now and June 30, 2011, as forecast by the state’s Council on Revenuea May 28. All told, Hawaii is expected to see tax revenue fallby $2.7 billioj over the next two years.
“If we do not implemenft the furlough plan, we would have to lay off up to 10,0000 employees to realize an equivalenty amountof savings,” Lingle said. The statee has about 46,000 workers, including 21,000o employees of the Departmentof Education. Lingle blamex the fiscal shortfall on the lingering rising unemployment, dropping visitor arrivals, a decline in privatre building permits, a doubling of foreclosures, and record bankruptcy The state Legislature ended its session last monthh by raising tax rates on hote l rooms, high-income earners, luxurg home transactions and tobacco to help meet the budgeft shortfall.
But Lingle, a Republican whoss vetoes of those measures were overridden bymajority Democrats, said she wouldf not ask for additional tax increases. She also rejectef calls for legalizing gambling. However, Linglre noted that 70 percentr of state operating funds go to labotr costs and that the stats had provided employee wage increase of between 16 and 29 percenr over the past fouryearxs “when our economy was thriving.
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