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.
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
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.