Lingle’s “budget” has $278M hole – that may or may not exist and may or may not need filling
Am I missing something, or is the Governor’s latest attempt at a budget yet another non-starter? First, I’ll note again that it’s foolish (and I’m speaking to both the Executive and Legislative branches here) to write budgets while there are collective bargaining agreements still unresolved, but that silliness happens regularly… Second, if the Lege drafts a budget that raises revenues or includes lay-offs of government workers, then the calculus at the collective bargaining talks changes. The House has already passed its draft of the budget that does those things, and the Senate draft probably will, too. The Governor submitted her (half-baked) budgets so late that she might as well have foregone submitting them at all. Now, whatever budget that passes will certainly not be anything resembling her “budget,” and she and her administration surely recognize(d) that fact. Thus, the Lingle administration has been freed to posture and to throw red meat to the masses (with talk of no new taxes, no lay-offs, pay and benefit cuts for public workers, etc.). That said, I don’t think the government employee unions are likely to agree to Lingle’s givebacks until they see what the alternative fiscal scenario from the Lege would be. Furthermore, since the counties and the unionized county workers are also part of the collective bargaining process, the Governor’s “take these pay and benefit cuts or face lay-offs” stance is not going to present a genuine risk to the rank and file unionized county workers. I have not heard of any Mayor(s) issuing a similar ultimatum. Have you?
On the “other” topic of the day, the Senate’s failure to recall the Civil Unions bill confirmed my cynical fears. How the Senate went from a (so-called) majority of support for the bill to only six votes in favor of the recall can’t be spun: too many duplicitous cowards. Oh well. Props to the six who voted in favor, and bigger props to Senator Hooser for his effort.
