Personel Board to Furlough State Workers - including Governor, excluding the Schools

The 2010-2012 biennial budget adopted by the legislature required Governor Beshear to find savings in the executive branch in order to balance the budget. Last week, he announced a cut of 1.5 percent for most parts of government. Today, he announced a 6-day furlough without pay for all executive branch employees.

This from Nikki Jackson Secretary of the Personnel Cabinet:

Dear Fellow State Employee:

In the face of an ongoing global economic recession, we have been forced to balance the state budget eight times in two-and-a-half years, and the enacted 2011-12 biennial budget requires cuts even deeper than the enacted appropriations. Today I am presentinga regulation to the State Personnel Board outlining a plan to furlough state employees a total of six days for Fiscal Year 2011, as authorized by the 2011-12 biennial budget passed by the General Assembly. The plan was developed with an eye toward minimizing the impact to state employees and will prevent over 400
layoffs.

The six days include three common days during which state offices will be closed that are adjacent to existing state holiday weekends – Friday, September 3, 2010 (Labor Day weekend); Friday, November 12, 2010 (Veterans Day weekend); and Friday, May 27, 2011 (Memorial Day weekend). In addition, employees will be furloughed for one day each in the months of October, March and June. Agencies will schedule employees to be off work in a manner that minimizes the impact to the public.

Both non-merit and merit system employees, full-time and part-time, including the Governor and all cabinet secretaries, will be furloughed the same numbers of days, regardless of salary, as will contract workers. In addition to furloughing non-merit system employees, the administration will reduce the overall number of non-merit system employees. Decisions about how to achieve those non-merit system employee reductions are still under discussion. Also, the Governor, all Cabinet secretaries and the Governor’s senior staff have taken and continue to take voluntary ten percent pay reductions to help balance the budget.

The administration does not take this step lightly, and it comes only in the face of eight budget-cutting exercises in two-and-a-half years, including the recent $1.5 billion budget deficit. Though the impact of furloughs to state employees should not be downplayed, furloughs are certainly preferable to mass layoffs, something other states are experiencing...

EKU President Doug Whitlock told faculty by email today,

We are fortunate neither the additional 1.5 percent cut, nor the furlough of employees applies to Eastern Kentucky University. The following is a question and answer taken from the Personnel Cabinet web site:

Q: Which employees must be furloughed?
A: All state executive branch merit and non-merit employees, including the Governor and all cabinet secretaries, will be furloughed. This does not apply to employees of the legislative or judicial branch, universities, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) or school districts.

Our exemption from this latest budget cut and the furlough are the latest evidence of the high priority given to higher education by the Governor. We must be mindful that our being spared means that other agencies of state government took heavier reductions than otherwise would have been the case. As I have told you before, I believe this places an even greater responsibility on us to be even better stewards of our resources...