I don’t have time to get much up about this right now, so this is an invitation to the other front pagers to expand on this piece throughout the day. The Rutland Herald has the story, which boils down to an agreement having been settled for the current budget year, but the administration insisting on some very serious cuts for future budget years that the union was unwilling to make. Specifically:
Finding savings in this fiscal year 2010 wasn’t the problem – officials from both parties agreed to achieve the necessary cuts via a combination of furlough days, unpaid holidays and medical-plan savings.
Secretary of Administration Neale Lunderville, however, insisted the union stipulate to an additional $20 million in labor cuts in fiscal years 2011 and 2012, a condition the Vermont State Employees Association ultimately rejected.
[…]
Jes Kraus, executive director of the 6,000-member VSEA, said union officials were unable to agree to the severe cuts Lunderville sought. He said the union, at significant financial expense to its members, helped the administration solve the $7.4 million hole in the current budget. Financial problems in 2011 and 2012, Kraus said, should be solved with the collective bargaining process, already under way, that will set labor agreements for the next two fiscal years.
This is pretty much bad for everybody.
Fuck it. I’ll comment. It’s a shame. This is Vermont for christ’s sake. It’s surreal and not in a good way.
Also, I noted the silence on this blog when the Joint Fiscal Committee on Legislature (Shumlin, Bartlett, Ancel, Cummings, etc.) ignored their own rules and voted to turn the question of layoffs and paycuts back over to Lunderville. Thanks for standing up for labor folks.
Not everyone can add light to the discussion. But if it’s just heat that you want: it’s terrible. It’s terrible, but perfectly consistent with Douglas’s track-record of gutting state agencies that do not specifically further his agenda. He doesn’t care about working people, either, because he’s never held a real job. Now that he doesn’t have to face reelection, he’s pretty much free to sew-up his “legacy” which he probably thinks should be in black ink rather than jobs and meaningful efforts to protect the environment. That’s what will win him a throne in the Republican pantheon.
There you are. Is that hot enough for you?