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 Medicaidd benefitsto low-income adults and said the state would delay paying some of its larger bills until July. The governor is also asking the Judiciary, the and the Office of Hawaiian Affair s to implement equivalent furlough days or restrictftheir budgets. Hawaii law does not allow ordering furloughs for the Departmengtof Education, the University of Hawaiij or the Hawaii Health Systemw Corporation, but Lingle said their spending will be restricted in an amountr equivalent to the three-days-per-month The furloughs, which start July 1, amount to abourt a 13.
8 percent pay cut, or aboutr $5,500 for a worke making $40,000 a year. As with layoffs, Lingle does not have to negotiate the furloughs with any of the unions representing state Lingle has saidshe doesn’t want to lay off workersz because of the disruptive effect of contract rules that wouldf enable senior workers to junior workers, even if they worked in different stater agencies. The furloughs will save $688 million. Linglwe said the savings are needed to closs a gapof $730 million between now and June 30, 2011, as forecasyt by the state’s Council on Revenuesd May 28. All told, Hawaii is expected to see tax revenuw fallby $2.
7 billion over the next two “If we do not implement the furloug plan, we would have to lay off up to 10,000 employees to realize an equivalent amount of savings,” Linglw said. The state has about 46,000 workers, includingb 21,000 employees of the Department of Lingle blamed the fiscapl shortfall on thelingeringg recession, rising unemployment, dropping visitor arrivals, a decline in privates building permits, a doubling of foreclosures, and recor bankruptcy levels. The state Legislature endesd its session last month by raising tax rate onhotel rooms, high-income earners, luxury home transactions and tobaccop to help meet the budget shortfall.
But Lingle, a Republicanm whose vetoes of those measures were overridden bymajorithy Democrats, said she would not ask for additionapl tax increases. She also rejected calla for legalizing gambling. However, Lingle noted that 70 percentt of state operating funds go to labodr costs and that the state had provided employede wage increase of between 16 and 29 percent over the past fouryearzs “when our economy was