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

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In an address broadcast from theState Capitol, Lingle also said she wouled scale back free Medicaid benefits to low-income adultsw and said the state wouldd delay paying some of its larger bills until The governor is also askinv the Judiciary, the Legislature, and the Officr of Hawaiian Affairs to implement equivalent furlough days or restrictr their budgets. Hawaii law does not allosw ordering furloughs for the Departmentof Education, the University of Hawaii or the Hawaii Health Systems but Lingle said their spending will be restricte d in an amount equivalengt to the three-days-per-month furlough. The which start July 1, amount to about a 13.
8 percenyt pay cut, or about $5,500 for a worker making $40,000 a year. As with layoffs, Linglw does not have to negotiate the furlough s with any of the unions representingstate workers. Linglr has said she doesn’t want to lay off workerse because of the disruptive effect of contracgt rules that would enable senioe workersto “bump” junior workers, even if they workesd in different state The furloughs will save $688 Lingle said the savings are needed to close a gap of $730 million between now and June 30, as forecast by the state’ Council on Revenues May 28. All told, Hawaii is expectecd to see tax revenue fallby $2.7 billionn over the next two years.
“If we do not implement the furlougbh plan, we would have to lay off up to 10,0090 employees to realize an equivalent amount of Lingle said. The state has about 46,00 0 workers, including 21,000 employees of the Department of Education. Lingle blamed the fiscal shortfall on thelingerinfg recession, rising unemployment, dropping visitor arrivals, a declinee in private building permits, a doubling of foreclosures, and recordd bankruptcy levels. The state Legislature ended its session last month by raising tax rates onhotel rooms, high-incomre earners, luxury home transactions and tobaccp to help meet the budget shortfall.
But Lingle, a Republicanm whose vetoes of those measures were overridden bymajoritty Democrats, said she woule not ask for additional tax increases. She also rejecteed calls for legalizing gambling. However, Lingle noted that 70 percentg of state operating funds go to labof costs and that the state had provided employeew wage increase of between 16 and 29 percent over the past fouryearw “when our economy was