Lawmakers seek to avoid axing workers

House and Senate leaders want to look at alternatives to eliminating state jobs in the big budget cuts ahead, such as mandating employees take unpaid furloughs or slashing their salaries and benefits.

A group of six lawmakers was put together Thursday to study the alternatives to laying off potentially thousands of the state's 24,000 workers, said Senate Majority Leader Sheldon Killpack, R-Syracuse.

"You don't necessarily just want to shoot with a blindfold," Killpack said. "You want to see your target and know where you're aiming."

The Legislature is looking at slicing some $450 million from the spending plan for the budget year that begins July 1, a 15 percent cut. The total could be even more depending on new revenue estimates due later this month.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has recommended a budget cut half the size of the Legislature's. Lisa Roskelley, the governor's spokeswoman, said they would be willing to consider alternatives to cutting employees.

Killpack said the group was told to hurry back with ideas to limit the size of what would be a reduction in force. Options, he said, include furloughs such as that already announced by Utah State University as well as across-the-board pay cuts.

The Utah Public Employees Association, which represents state workers, acknowledges jobs will be lost in the upcoming budget cuts. An emergency meeting of the UPEA board has been called for Saturday to consider the alternatives.

"We have to," said Audry Wood, UPEA executive director, when asked if the organization was open to accepting furloughs or pay and benefit cuts.

UPEA employee representative Todd Sutton said lawmakers were able to largely avoid cutting positions that are currently filled. The next budget year, though, "is not going to work that way. It's going to be deeper," Sutton said.

He said whatever is done, the preference is that it not be permanent.

"As an association, we view this as temporary. It's a crisis of course, but this is not going to be the rule for the rest of the existence of our state," Sutton said.

While furloughs would be temporary, salary and especially benefit cuts are more difficult to make up, he said. "Employees tend not to get those back."

The UPEA is not a union and employees do not have a contract that would have to be renegotiated.

There are four Republicans and two Democrats on the committee, Killpack said, including Sen. Dan Liljenquist, R-Bountiful, and Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo.

Liljenquist is sponsoring a bill, SB126, that Sutton said would change the state's reduction-in-force procedure that must be followed to lay off workers.

Sutton said the bill would make it easier for agencies not to give preference to employees who were laid off when rehiring. "I've heard the term 'deadwood' tossed around a lot," he said.

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