More Details Learned About Possible State Furlough

COLUMBUS, Ohio —State employees may soon be voting on a plan to help balance the state budget at their own expense.

Published reports indicate that state negotiators have reached a tentative agreement with the largest state employee union that would spare state workers from an outright pay cut, but require them to take ten days off without pay, NBC 4‘s Patrick Preston reported.

Neither the governor’s office, the Ohio Department of Administration or the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association will confirm or deny the details of the negotiations.

Both sides agreed not to tell the media or public until after a deal is reached.

After proposing state employee pay cuts as high as 6 percent to balance his budget, Gov. Ted Strickland continues to look for ways to save the state $163 million in employee concessions.

If workers take ten days off without pay, it would amount to a nearly 4 percent pay cut. A state employee making $50,000 a year would lose nearly $2,000 in taxable income.

Nearly 25,000 of the more than 60,000 state employees are based in Franklin County, with thousands more in surrounding counties.

How would the days off affect state services? Would offices be closed for days at a time or would employees spread out their days off to continue operations, or would the state simply not pay workers for state-recognized holidays?

“It doesn’t really force the tough decisions that need to be made,“ said David Hansen, president of The Buckeye Institute.

While critics of the budget said Strickland needs to cut programs and departments, rather than simply cut workers’ hours, the governor’s office will not acknowledge the details of the negotiations or how government will be impacted.

OCSEA’s 35,000 members must first vote to approve any deal.

The impact of a furlough could potentially have a huge impact on area businesses as well.

Inside Broad Street Bagels, roughly seven out of every ten customers is a state employee, and manager Phil Kukucka said the business averages 350 to 400 people a day when state employees are working.

“On the days that the state is closed, we might average 40 (customers),“ Kukucka said. “If they are going to let people take random days, I don’t think that would hurt us as much, but if it’s a mandatory day that the state will be closed, then it’s going to be another holiday, and as I said before, we’ll lose about 75 percent of our business that day.“

Union leaders did not return phone calls on Friday, but NBC 4 is told that once a deal is struck with OCSEA that the deal will be used as a master agreement to negotiate with other state employee unions.

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