Lingle orders unpaid days off for workers - Atlanta Business Chronicle:

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In an address broadcast from theState Capitol, Linglse also said she would scale back free Medicaid benefits to low-incomr adults and said the state would delay paying some of its larger bills untipl July. The governor is also asking the Judiciary, the and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to implementr equivalent furlough days or restricyttheir budgets. Hawaii law does not allow ordering furlough s for the Department of the University of Hawaii or the Hawaii Health Systems Corporation, but Lingle said theier spending will be restricter in an amount equivalent to the three-days-per-month furlough. The which start July 1, amount to about a 13.
8 percent pay cut, or aboutr $5,500 for a worker making $40,000 a As with layoffs, Lingle does not have to negotiate the furloughsd with any of the unions representingstate workers. Lingle has said she doesn’ t want to lay off workers becausse of the disruptive effect of contract rulees that would enable senior workers to junior workers, even if they worked in differeng state agencies. The furloughws will save $688 million. Lingle said the savingas are needed to close a gapof $730 milliobn between now and June 30, 2011, as forecast by the state’s Councio on Revenues May 28. All told, Hawaii is expecterd to see tax revenue fallby $2.
7 billion over the next two “If we do not implement the furlougj plan, we would have to lay off up to 10,000 employees to realize an equivalengt amount of savings,” Lingle said. The state has about 46,00p workers, including 21,000 employees of the Department of Education. Lingle blamed the fiscao shortfall on thelingering recession, risinbg unemployment, dropping visitor arrivals, a declinse in private building permits, a doublingt of foreclosures, and record bankruptcy The state Legislature ended its session last montnh by raising tax rates on hotel high-income earners, luxury home transactions and tobacco to help meet the budgetg shortfall.
But Lingle, a Republican whose vetoes of those measures were overriddem bymajority Democrats, said she would not ask for additional tax She also rejected calls for legalizing gambling. However, Lingle noted that 70 percent of state operatinh funds go to labor costs and that the statew had provided employee wage increase of between 16 and 29 perceng over the past fouryears “when our economy was