Now you can add your comments on the Lingle budget cuts without having to register or identify yourself in way. At least I’m trying to make that change and intend to allow open discussion for the time being.
My hope is that some state and county workers will take advantage of this to share observations about their work places.
If comments get out of hand, I’ll take an active role in editing. Hopefully that won’t be necessary.
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Is impeachment to strong a word?
I would suggest putting partisan politics (not to mention greed and grasping) aside and getting together as a “committee of the whole” to understand the true scope of the problem (bad) and address it (possible).
However, I see the opposite trend.
Whatever. It’s your problem and you’re welcome to it. We’re moving on.
Ian –
Have been reading your site since it was recommended by Howard Dicus. I am a state worker and I find your insights to the goings on very good and always interesting. I even enjoy the non-political/business information about the dogs/cats/parents etc.
Keep it up – I look forward to logging in everyday!
P.S. I tried to log on to the other comment site but could not figure out how to once I got my log in – not very computer savy…. thank for this opportunity to express my appreciation for your work!
When the Star-Bulletin was going to lay off workers back in 2001, the staff stepped up and took a paycut to preserve those jobs.
It’s too bad the state workers’ unions aren’t seeing it the same way and accept the proposed furloughs to avoid layoffs. Better to have less work than no work.
Dean – the key question here, I think, is “did the Star-Bulletin employees ever recoup those cuts?” From the current state of that newspaper, my guess is that they didn’t – or, if they did, the recoup didn’t last long.
No one I know has any trust that pay cuts will be restored when (if) the economy improves. They reckon instead that one retrenchment will lead to others, until Ph.D.s are working for $7 an hour and Nirvana has been achieved. See Hawaii DOE, which ensures that the take-home pay for teachers is, in terms of buying power, just over half that of the next-lowest-paying US jurisdiction (LA, from memory).
Without that trust, I think, there is no productive way forward.
The view from our office is that life would be much easier if we had just been given furlough days in the beginning.
It’s hard for us to tell who is being honest, or if any of them are. The unions have almost completely lost our trust – they seem to change their story and tactics with each meeting. They do not ask us for our input at all; they tell us what to say and think. The few proposals the union has made public would have been even harder on us than the governor’s original plan. For those of us with fewer than ten years experience the mood is universal: the union is willing to sacrifice us to maintain their own power.
This RIF process will be a disaster, and will shut government down. The original people layed off will get to bump others, so it’s silly to say they were ‘targeted’. Our fear is that we will end up losing half our staff, and that they will be replaced by people from other divisions with more seniority and more bitterness. Further, half of us might end up in new positions for which we are only remotely qualified for. I’ll have to spend all my time training people or being trained.
I don’t know if I can trust the governor either. I don’t know if I can trust these ‘insiders’ who won’t go on the record. I certainly don’t trust the legislature at this point.
From my observations of Georgina Kawamura’s testimony at the WAM/FIN hearing, there doesn’t seem to be much of a plan besides firing a bunch of people, and crossing fingers that the resulting savings will be somewhere in the neighborhood of the amount the governor calculated in February that she would need. It didn’t sound like they had a target amount or had updated their calculations of what was needed to meet the gap. They just used the percentage they would have saved with furloughs and went with it.
Really, it sounds like the governor doesn’t know what she is doing. Or maybe she isn’t willing to share her plan? Either way is not very encouraging.
As a former state employee, I have no trust in the Lingle Administration or HGEA. I and other co-workers had very legitimate grievance claims against the Lingle Administration’s use of our Division for political gains; acts of corruption, unethical practices, unprofessional behaviors, illegal activities, malfeasance, misappropriation of federal funding, bullying in the workplace, failures to pay OT, racketeering, culturally insensitive practices, and so on. We brought these serious allegations to the attention of HGEA officials, along with evidentiary documentation, and the union initially got involved. Then when they realized the scope, magnitude, and legitimacy of our claims, they balked. In fact, we were told by HGEA Union leader Randy Perreira that the union would not “spend that kind of money and time” on our case. Oh, the webs we weave. We lost our jobs at the whim of political appointees because we stood up for what was legal, ethical, and pono and HGEA kissed us off and left us out to dry.
The way that the system is set up with seniority being king, you can easily have someone making $100,000 per year as an executive, wind up in a job that normally pays much, much less because they will be able to bump someone further down the seniority food chain. There isn’t a lot of money to be saved by layoffs.
If you need to save money fast, layoffs won’t do it. What with bumping, this could take months. Furloughs are paycuts but it appears we would be hiring people to make up the slack for some tasks. No one knows.
We do know that lots of folks are ready to retire and with a little sweetener and a deadline, state employment could look like the life boat scenes from the Titanic.
Yet the administration seems uninterested.
Leaving stimulus okane on the table is unconscionable but somebody (hopefully a responsible adult in a position of authority) needs to look ahead and have a contingency plan for a declining economy and plummeting state revenues through 2012. That’s reality. Pushing everything forward to 2010 is just rearranging deckchairs on the aforementioned Titanic.
I think this is a perfect opportunity to trim the state’s workforce to the size it should be. It has become bloated and out of control. As a long time taxpayer I do not feel I am getting my monies worth.
The easiest way to monitor the comments is just to set it so that you have to approve them.
I also require folks to leave an email that isn’t published on my blog, however, it allows me to return a personal comment to the commenter off the blog if need be.
Your blog is the best blog in Hawaii.
“The easiest way to monitor the comments is just to set it so that you have to approve them.”
but everyone isn’t reading your blog Damon
people are reading the SB comments everyday
some of the best comments come from someone like myself who never post in a place were I would have to go through the gatekeeping of some arrogant blog dope
Ian may be on to something ….
as to the current budget issues
it brings out the intellectual dishonesty in all
whatever side you are on you can find a reason to point at the other side
so each side fosters hate
and if you keep repeating hate, that is the definition of insanity