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Budget Woes: Cut boards, commissions and
study groups to save money
by Jackie Juntti
Washington state - 11/20/01 - Now here is another example of how the
Democrats like to protect the poor and the elderly. The proposal to
cut all state employee salaries by 5% sounds great. (See story following
this commentary). I have put forth the idea to
reduce state salaries for all
employees who make over $100,000.00 per annum. To cut the salaries
of employees whose annual salary is below $40,000.00 is a cruel proposal
at best. 5% of an employee making under $40K is going to be a big
hit to that individual and would create an undue hardship. 5% of an
employee making over $100K will not create the personal hardship and would
show more sincerity in trying to hold the line.
Sen. Fairley needs to give this consideration. She also needs to
look at
the giant bite the Liquor Control Board and all the liquor stores take out
of the budget. Turn this one area over to private enterprise,
regulate and tax the private stores and make money rather than spend
money.
The Senate might take a look at the extra staffing they get during session
- this could be reduced to the same number as the House members have - one
each, not two or three each. I sincerely doubt the Senators have
three times the work load as the House members do.
Eliminating all those Boards, Commissions, Study Groups is another HUGE
chunk of money.
Layoffs of all those many new employees Locke has hired would also
reduce the payroll amount.
The proposal to take 5% across the board - punishing the lower paid
employees is CRUEL when there are so many other places to legitimately get
the money from. The problem is DEMOCRATS won't make those kind of
cuts as the political contribution river flows thru those goodies.
Send those emails and call the Hot Line (1-800-562-6000) - let your
legislators know what you want cut and don't let them off the hook. Senate
email addresses: http://www.leg.wa.gov/senate/members/email/default.cfm
House
members:
http://www.leg.wa.gov/house/hadm/name.htm
Gary Locke
c/o
"Middleton, Dana" <Dana.Middleton@GOV.WA.GOV>
Now is the time to speak up and be heard.
Jackie Juntti
WGEN idzrus@earthlink.net
AP Story Follows:
State senator's budget idea:
Cut all state employee salaries 5 percent
By DAVID AMMONS The Associated Press
11/20/01 9:01 PM
OLYMPIA (AP) -- A senior Senate Democrat, hoping to head off deep state
budget cuts and layoffs, on Tuesday proposed a 5 percent salary cut for
all
state employees for one year.
"We've got to get innovative, really think outside the box during
times
like these," Sen. Darlene Fairley, D-Lake Forest Park, said in
an
interview. "If people out in the rest of the world are having
to tighten
their belts, why shouldn't we be a part of that?"
Her proposal is that all public employees, including the governor and
legislators, state agency workers, higher education employees and
teachers,
agree to a 5 percent pay cut in the upcoming fiscal year, which begins
next
summer.
She hasn't run the numbers, but believes the savings might be enough to
head off major budget cuts, including employee layoffs.
The Senate Ways and Means Committee estimated that if lawmakers canceled a
scheduled pay raise for state employees and higher education professors
and
staffers and cut their pay 5 percent, it would save $140 million.
There
are about 90,000 public employees, not counting teachers.
Teacher salaries are negotiated at the local level and probably could not
be cut, particularly following voter approval of Initiative 732 last year
mandating annual cost-of-living increases, the committee staff said.
Gov. Gary Locke's budget director, Marty Brown, said he's discussed
Fairley's plan with her. "We did look into it, but it's not
something
we're looking at right now" as the administration puts a new budget
together.
Fairley, a senior member of the budget-writing committee and chairwoman of
the construction budget panel, said the state faces a temporary revenue
problem and that it makes more sense to cut salaries than to reduce
frontline services that people need in a recession. If everyone
takes a
pay cut, it should save some of their fellow workers' jobs, she said.
"At a time when Boeing is laying off, state government shouldn't be
laying
off, too, or you start really spiraling down the economy," she said.
Fairley said she got the idea for the pay cut from her son, whose company,
Fortee software in Kirkland, cut salaries by 15 percent to save jobs.
Greg Devereux, head of the Washington Federation of State Employees,
AFL-CIO, praised Fairley for trying to head off layoffs and service cuts,
but said the union can't agree to pay cuts.
"There are many other ideas we ought to look at before we talk about
such
things," he said in an interview. Those include using state
reserves of
about $450 million and repealing some of the $1.2 billion worth of tax
cuts
granted in the past decade, he said.
Massive layoffs to solve a temporary financial problem would end up
costing
plenty in retraining and recruitment costs, Devereux said.
Earlier in the day, Brown said in a prepared statement about budget woes
that "state-funded employees may see some changes in compensation or
benefits packages, but no one's made any decisions about that yet."
In an interview, Brown said that statement was simply a warning that
"We
don't want to take anything off the table right now."
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