Budget forecast worse than expected

Scott's picture

The announcement this morning is disheartening at best. The expected deficit for the rest of this biennium is up to $855 Million. For the 2009-11 biennium, it rose to nearly $3 Billion.

Since no one thinks we have hit bottom yet, imagine what the numbers will look like in May. It's staggering.

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Scott's picture

Re: Budget forecast worse than expected

To add a little perspective, the estimated savings from salaries freezes and 8 furlough days is around $187 Million dollars. That's for all employees. The breakdown is $122 Million for salary freezes and $35 Million for the furlough days.

That's a drop-in-the-bucket. So we should all be scared of, and SEIU needs to prepare for the fight against, the upcoming layoffs. I just did the math. Based on the Governor's savings for furlough days, if every employee was furloughed for the entire biennium, the savings would only be $1.14 Billion. That's less than a third of what we should be expecting the shortfall to be.

Admittedly, if there were no employees, none of the other money would get spent either. That's a rough way to save $14 Billion though.

Scott's picture

Re: Budget forecast worse than expected

Word has it that DAS just had their first round of layoffs. I don't know how many, or what areas of DAS. And there are more coming. This is in addition to some other agencies where employees have already been given their pink slips for the new biennium. It seems their programs won't be funded past the end of June.