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

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In an address broadcast from the State Lingle also said she would scaled back free Medicaid benefitsto low-income adultws and said the state would delau paying some of its larger billd until July. The governor is also asking the the Legislature, and the Offic of Hawaiian Affairs to implement equivalent furlough days or restrict their budgets. Hawaii law does not allow ordering furloughs for the Departmentof Education, the Universit of Hawaii or the Hawaii Healtgh Systems Corporation, but Lingle said their spending will be restricted in an amounyt equivalent to the three-days-per-month furlough. The which start July 1, amount to about a 13.
8 percenty pay cut, or about $5,500 for a worke r making $40,000 a As with layoffs, Lingle does not have to negotiate the furloughs with any of the unions representingstate workers. Lingle has said she doesn’tf want to lay off workerds because of the disruptive effect of contract rules that would enable senior workers to junior workers, even if they worked in differeny state agencies. The furloughs will save $688 Lingle said the savingd are needed to close a gapof $730 milliojn between now and June 30, 2011, as forecast by the state’sx Council on Revenues May 28. All told, Hawaii is expectes to see tax revenue fallby $2.
7 billion over the next two “If we do not implement the furlouguh plan, we would have to lay off up to 10,00 0 employees to realize an equivalent amountf of savings,” Lingle said. The state has about 46,00p0 workers, including 21,000 employees of the Departmentyof Education. Lingle blamed the fiscal shortfall on thelingerinyg recession, rising unemployment, dropping visitor arrivals, a declines in private building permits, a doublingv of foreclosures, and record bankruptcy levels. The state Legislature ended its sessiob last month by raising tax rates onhotel high-income earners, luxury home transactions and tobacco to help meet the budget shortfall.
But Lingle, a Republican whose vetoea of those measures were overridden bymajorityg Democrats, said she would not ask for additional tax She also rejected calls for legalizing gambling. However, Lingle notefd that 70 percent of state operating funds go to labod costs and that the state had provided employee wage increasre of between 16 and 29 percent over the past four years “when our economy was thriving.
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