Reardon’s proposed 2010 budget calls for furloughs, wage cuts

Published 1:32 pm Friday, September 18, 2009

EVERETT — A crash diet that Snohomish County started this spring would continue under County Executive Aaron Reardon’s proposed budget for next year.

That means asking the county’s employees to continue taking at least one unpaid furlough day per month. Deputies and corrections officers also would be asked to take new wage cuts, Reardon said after his budget release on Friday.

Those sacrifices are necessary, he said, to avoid layoffs, so county employees “can do their job without looking over their shoulder.” Taxpayers should also see current levels of service, without further cuts.

“Taxpayers receive reliability in their services and employees receive certainty in their jobs,” he said after a short speech.

The proposed 2010 general fund budget is about $200 million — only one-tenth of a percent lower than the revised budget county leaders agreed to in March to forestall a budget crisis. Reardon said the emergency measures, which chopped about $6.7 million from the original 2009 general-fund budget mostly through making employees take unpaid days off, have put the county in a better position than other government in the region.

Because of the shortened hours, many county customer-service functions run on shortened schedules and shut down during lunch.

The 11 furlough days that most county employees took this year amounted to a pay cut of about 4 percent. In Reardon’s proposal for next year, they would have to take 12 to 15 days off without pay. Though their paychecks wouldn’t change, their overall pay for the year would go down.

Deputies and corrections officers did not have to take wage cuts or furloughs last year.

The County Council plans to work up its own budget from scratch, rather than relying on what the executive suggested, Chairman Mike Cooper said. That approach started last year.

While Cooper said he shares Reardon’s priorities of saving jobs and avoiding service cuts, he wanted to look at different ways of getting there. He said he hoped to find solutions that would avoid furloughs.

He also questioned whether it was wise to assume that unions and guilds would agree to concessions before any such agreements had been reached.

“I know that there’s been a conversation about everybody making concessions, but those are discussions that have to take place at the bargaining table,” he said. “That’s what bothers me a little bit.”

The council has until Dec. 1 to pass its budget. The council has scheduled three meetings in October to gather public input on the budget.