House hired less session staff?
Buried at the end of Borreca’s Star-Bulletin column today:
Finally, here’s some good news: a veteran legislative worker who is saving money. Patricia Mau-Shimizu, the House Clerk, was told to cut the House budget.
She renegotiated contracts with vendors, cut back on new capital expenses, told House workers to take vacation time if they wanted Christmas [Eve, I hope] and New Year’s Eve off. She decided the state House didn’t need so many workers and just generally sucked it up.
The end result was a 10 percent reduction in the House budget. Total savings: $1.2 million.
So it can be done and without the Enron accounting schemes.
Translation: Savings can easily be made if you’re willing to “find savings” at the expense of the workers. Sorry, make that “at the expense of the non-unionized workers of the House.”
Hey, House insiders, care to explain what this 10% cut meant in terms of hiring? Less money allocated for each office to hire session staff could mean the same number of staff (but with even more modest salaries), or it could simply mean fewer staff were hired. The Lege is not going to have any less work this year than in a non-recession year, so the staff will have to do at least as much work with less pay and/or fewer co-workers. As if session workers were ever known to be slackers. [Well, except for staff working for powerless dissident or Minority legislators. Heh.]
