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State may force workers to take unpaid time off
State and university workers could be forced to take a couple of days off each month - without pay - to help cut expenses. Parents who want their youngsters to go to kindergarten all day may need to once again pay tuition.
The state may hold off building new schools even where there is population growth.
And schools may have to use the same textbooks for an additional year.
Those are some options being discussed as legislative leaders try to figure out how to plug a $1.2 billion gap between current spending levels and the amount of tax dollars they expect to receive. That's out of a $9.9 billion budget.
But the fixes - including unplanned and unpaid time off - easily could extend beyond the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
Some estimates put the deficit for next budget year at more than $2 billion, or more if the current rate of spending continues.
Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said Tuesday that forced time off is a "definite possibility."
Figures prepared by legislative budget staffers estimate that the state would save about $126 million a year if most workers were forced to take two days off a month without pay.
Kavanagh, who will chair the House Appropriations Committee this coming session, said the alternatives are worse.
"I certainly would rather see furloughs or pay cuts before I start laying people off," he said. "And I suspect most employees, other than the senior ones, would probably agree."
That $126 million savings assumes that some agencies would be exempt, like the Department of Corrections and the Arizona State Hospital.
Incoming Senate President Bob Burns, R-Peoria, said reducing personnel costs has to be part of the mix to balancing the budget. But Burns said he is not yet convinced that forced time off is the best course of action in all cases.
"It seems to me it might be better in some cases ... to leave it up to the agency," he said, to figure out how best to live within their reduced budgets.
"It might be a combination of layoffs and furloughs in order to get their costs down where they're manageable."
Along the same lines, one option being considered is simply telling agency directors that they have to cut spending by a set percentage and letting them figure out how to do that.
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