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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Aloha Ian
Remember her promise back in 2002 when she first took office?
Better service, attitude
Another large group of our community that’s not here with us today and I want to make special mention of is the state workers, our government workers. Yes, they are very important to us. And now, all of us, as state workers, we know what we must deliver to the people of Hawai’i — better service with a better attitude to our community. We must do that.
Throughout my campaign, I pledged to our state workers that there will be no layoffs of any current workers, and I will keep that pledge.
But I also pledged to the people of Hawai’i that our services would improve, that they would get better, that they would get done in a most respectful way. And we as state workers must now earn back the respect of the people of Hawai’i, and we will spend every day doing just that.
You are going to get better service with a better attitude.
Thank you for allowing anonymous posts.
People talk about “trimming the state’s workforce to the size it should be” without realizing what is really happening. Lingle is trying to break unions and civil service, while privatizing to help her political patrons and future political aspirations … they aren’t trimming the workforce, they are just privatizing it.
Totally dishonest and blatantly political. And not what the people of Hawaii would approve of if they could understand the truth.
People talk about “trimming the state’s workforce to the size it should be” without realizing what is really happening. Lingle is trying to break unions and civil service, while privatizing to help her political patrons and future political aspirations
— you say this, but if the furloughs were accepted, and 2 days was offered early on, how can claim any privatization factor?
You think that would have stopped layoffs? You think privatization is not already happening and would not have continued to happen because of that? Think again. Read the comments here and Ian’s excellent reporting.
Layoffs and privatization were always part of the plan. Furloughs were just a ploy by the Lingle administration to transfer the blame to the unions. She deliberately fought this battle in the court of public opinion because, frankly, people are stupid and the media is too weak and corrupted by corporate influence to call her out on it.
“Read the comments here and Ian’s excellent reporting…. Layoffs and privatization were always part of the plan. Furloughs were just a ploy ….”
I am reading and reading and reading …. but what reporting are you referring to?
are you talking about reporting on the “we hate Lingle and Republicans” venting session that includes no actual description on how the deficit numbers are going to be made up?
Borreca called it — it’s going to be tax increases or the state government is going to blow up
and I’ll add, everything else is pretty much propagandizing the blame on a boogeyman
Thank you for your most informative reporting.
I have worked in State service for 23 years and I must say that I have never worked for a more deceptive and amoral governor as Linda and her minions. Here are some salient and sobering points on her lack of leadership skills.
No bona fide negotiations with the public worker unions – but negotiations under the guise of public concern in the press.
No rationale for the proposed reduction-in-force; Kawamura says that each department made up their own plan.
I always thought (naively in retrospect) that good government is based on good people with a sense of morality; prevarication and duplicity contravenes good government. This administration thanks to Mark Bennett has had the chutzpah to invoke attorney-client privilege to deceive the public as to the basis of their decision-making.
The Lingle administration embodies the ideals of politics and government articulated by Niccollo Machiavelli – and reinforces my pessimism that humans are inherently evil.
oh – and in my workplace, gloom and doom is the prevailing mood. several colleagues stand to lose their home if they are unable to make mortgage payments. in 1995, during the last reduction-in-force, Governor Cayetano did consult with the public worker unions prior to implementing a RIF. just wondering why Governor Lingle is not following the same path her predecessor used?
rather then dwell on Haupia’s rhetorical mountain of hate, let’s check the SB, June 4, 2009 (Borreca)
“In response, Perreira said Lingle has made three offers and all included at least 16 furlough days a year. Now, Lingle is set to impose furloughs of 36 days a year under her Monday plan.”
Aloha Ian:
“Hope” dismisses my observations as a “rhetorical mountain of hate” and quotes Borreca’s June 4, 2009, Star Bulletin article entitled “Furloughs set off trash talk” which states in pertinent part that:
“Lingle also insisted she has negotiated with the unions, saying that she has held individual meetings with all four of the state union leaders, and met with the University of Hawaii and Board of Education officials, but has been stymied by the unions.
“They wanted to wait,” she said. “They thought they could get the Legislature to raise taxes. There was a reluctance on their part to come in.
“It is not that there was no proposal on our part. I have been talking to the unions since last September,” Lingle said, adding that Perreira’s dismissal of her claims to be bargaining are “disingenuous.” ”
Randy Perreira had succintly summed up Lingle’s smokescreen – so ingeniously put together by Russell Pang and Lenny Klompus – by bluntly stating earlier in Borreca’s story that: “It is the governor who has been LYING to the press. She has been lying to the Legislature about how close to an agreement she is with other unions,” Perreira said. “Now she is fooling herself into thinking that people agree with her.” [Capital letters supplied].
I am sorry that Hope chooses to ignore factual information – something foreign to Lingle-Pang-Klompus.