Gov. Linda Lingle hopes to save $688 million over the next two years by requiring all state employees to take three furlough days per month starting on July 1, she announced today.

Without furloughs, Lingle said she would have to lay off up to 10,000 employees to get the equivalent amount of savings.
At a speech today, Lingle said, “This is the most difficult decision I have had to make since becoming governor. It is not something I want to do, but it is something I have to do.”
Lingle has no authority to order employees of the University of Hawaii, state Department of Education or Hawaii Health Systems Corp. So she will plan to reduce their spending by an amount equal to the three-day-per-month furloughs. The furloughs would amount to about a 13.8 percent pay cut.
She is also asking the judiciary, Legislature and Office of Hawaiian Affairs take similar furloughs or restrict their budgets by an equivalent amount.
Lingle also plans to delay — by a “few days” — paying into the state employee health and retirement funds and delaying reimbursements to managed-care health plans for Medicaid expenditures.
“No pensions or health benefits will be jeopardized in any way,” she said. The state will save $130 million and its payment will “only (be) a few days late in July.”