Work Furloughs

Given the continued problems with public finance throughout the state, perhaps it's time to think seriously about short work furloughs as one way to deal with the current fiscal difficulties. As a 20-year civil servant, I'm at a point where I'm ready to give up a little to help maintain the system. If all non-critical state, county, city and special district employees took a one-day furlough each month, it should help relieve the problem. I realize that this would place some financial hardships on some government employees who have large families, but without additional public funding, which seems unlikely at this time, the alternative would be large layoffs in public employment this summer and beyond.

Tradition has been squeezed out by budget belt tightening in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Two football traditions — opening night on the Friday of the first full week of September and playing second-round playoff games the night before Thanksgiving — will end in the fall because of district-mandated work furlough days. "It's always an adventure," Michael Immken, Chatsworth High's athletic director, said of the LAUSD. City Section schools can't play host to games Sept.

Gov. Pete Wilson on Friday vetoed legislation that would have expanded the use of voluntary work furloughs to help cut state costs, saying the bill could actually have worsened the state's financial condition. The Democratic-controlled Legislature sent the bill to the Republican governor as a substitute for Wilson's proposal to cut state employees' pay by 5% and to require furloughs at the discretion of department supervisors.

Like many other state employees, prison nurse Nellie Larot was hit last year with furloughs that cut her salary: It dropped $10,000, to $92,000. But she more than made up for it by working extra shifts, raking in $177,512 in overtime, according to state records. Her total $270,000 in earnings last year eclipsed the $225,000 paid to Matthew Cate, head of the entire state prison system. Despite Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to furlough workers three days a month to save money, many employees are taking home paychecks fattened by overtime -- more than $1 billion of it last year.

Proposing another round of sharp cuts to cope with their latest budget deficit, county administrators Monday targeted the Sheriff's Department SWAT team and said they would ask labor unions to agree to weeklong mandatory work furloughs for every county employee. In all, county officials suggested $20 million in specific program cuts and offered the supervisors other options, such as the work furlough, that could save $9.3 million more.

In a ruling that could have statewide impact, an appeals court Tuesday stripped judges of their power to sentence convicts to residential work furlough centers instead of jail. The 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that only the county Probation Department, not a judge, can send a convicted criminal to a work furlough center--and then only if the center is under contract with the county government.

In a severe response to last week's state budget cuts, the City Council is proposing to slash employee salaries 10% by imposing a mandatory work furlough on more then half its labor force. The move, when combined with current employee work schedules designed to reduce commuting, would have the net effect of shuttering all government buildings, except those of the police and fire departments, every Friday beginning Oct. 9.

With Los Angeles facing a $529-million budget deficit, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Tuesday urged the City Council to declare a fiscal emergency that would grant him the authority to lay off and furlough thousands of city workers.

As it takes steps to overhaul its beleaguered jail work-release program, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department says it has sharply reduced the number of delinquent inmates by aggressively tracking down skip-outs and by dramatically cutting back on the number of convicts allowed to serve their sentences in the community.

Los Angeles school district officials asked union members Friday to agree to four furlough days this year and a future 12% pay cut to help offset a nearly $500-million budget shortfall next year. Without the concessions, the district may have to lay off up to 8,500 employees this summer, according to a letter to employees from Supt. Ramon C. Cortines. L.A. Unified, the nation's second-largest district, faces nearly a $60-million deficit this year and a projected $480-million shortfall next year, and Cortines said he expects future reductions in state funding.

A state judge on Thursday struck down Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's furloughs of correctional officers, who have been working on furlough days and banking the unpaid time off. Judge Frank Roesch of Alameda County Superior Court ruled that the governor's furlough order violated state law. He ordered the state to pay the prison workers for the unpaid hours they have worked. To save money, Schwarzenegger last summer began furloughing for three days a month nearly every category of state worker.

"Pulp Fiction" screenwriter Roger Avary won't be tweeting again any time soon, a Ventura County sheriff's official said Monday. Avary probably will serve the rest of his yearlong sentence for a fatal drunken driving accident in the county jail instead of a lower-security work furlough program, said Sheriff's Department spokesman Ross Bonfiglio. He's expected to be released next July. Until last week, Avary had been permitted to leave the furlough program daily to work at a production office, where he sent out tweets about strip searches, lockdowns and talks with gangbangers, officials said.

About 20,000 Los Angeles school district workers have agreed to four unpaid furlough days to help close a large budget gap, officials announced Monday. Two units of Service Employees International Union Local 99 representing cafeteria workers, bus drivers and other employees approved the measure last week by a combined vote of 953 to 234, said Blanca Gallegos, a union spokeswoman. The members will take one furlough day per month from February through May. The move will save about $7.7 million, according to union officials.

Los Angeles school district officials asked union members Friday to agree to four furlough days this year and a future 12% pay cut to help offset a nearly $500-million budget shortfall next year. Without the concessions, the district may have to lay off up to 8,500 employees this summer, according to a letter to employees from Supt. Ramon C. Cortines. L.A. Unified, the nation's second-largest district, faces nearly a $60-million deficit this year and a projected $480-million shortfall next year, and Cortines said he expects future reductions in state funding.

The Obama administration has asked California to explain how furloughs for state workers are affecting the state's ability to meet an escalating demand for unemployment insurance benefits and services to millions of jobless people. A regional administrator at the Labor Department this week wrote to the director of the California Employment Development Department, asking him to demonstrate that no decline in the federally financed unemployment insurance program "will occur as the result of this statewide action."

The Los Angeles City Council moved forward Wednesday with a plan for layoffs and furloughs but declined to end discussion over a proposal to give employees early retirement, leaving that question to its labor negotiators. As they struggled to eliminate a $405-million budget shortfall, council members said they still hoped the city's negotiators would come up with other budget solutions over the next two days that would help them avoid the most draconian cuts. The council referred the early retirement plan to the Executive Employee Relations Committee, which is composed of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and four council members.

Sheriff's officials have temporarily stopped placing newly convicted inmates in the work-release program, giving department trouble-shooters time to overhaul a problem-plagued system that has returned thousands of habitual offenders to the streets without even a cursory review of their criminal histories. "What we have decided to do is really triage the whole program and find out from a historical perspective what has happened," custody chief Barry King said in an interview Friday.

Faced with continued jail overcrowding, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is pushing forward with efforts to place nonviolent convicts--many of them white-collar criminals--on a house arrest program. Sheriff's officials say they are prepared to send up to 4,000 convicts home with electronic monitoring bracelets, more than double the current number, to free up jail beds and ensure that more hardened convicts serve their full sentences behind bars.

A policymaking body for California's courts decided unanimously Wednesday to close all courthouses on the third Wednesday of every month in response to budget cuts. The closures, approved by the California Judicial Council, will begin in September and continue through June. They are expected to save $85.4 million. In addition, judges will be asked to take voluntary furloughs one day a month, resulting in a 4.62% pay cut. Chief Justice Ronald M.

The University of California's Board of Regents voted overwhelmingly Thursday to push most professors and staff members into furlough days that would reduce their salaries 4% to 10% for the year starting Sept. 1. The controversial furlough plan would affect about 140,000 part- and full-time employees at UC's 10 campuses and many satellite facilities. Meeting in San Francisco, the regents voted 20 to 1 for the furloughs, which they said were needed as a way to avoid layoffs during the current state budget crisis.