- United States
- Wash.
- Letter
As a family that depends on state government work for our livelihood, we want to share our thoughts on the budget issues facing Washington. Ideally there would be no cuts to state workers, but we recognize we don’t live in an ideal world. If there must be budget shifts that impact the state government workforce, we find the furlough option to be more palatable to job cuts or pay cuts. Furloughs are easier to reverse if things improve, and depending on the agency, may lower infrastructure costs. This is preferable to working the same hours but for less pay, which feels like a punishment. We had recently accepted that by being furloughed one day a month, as we’d been told was the plan, we would have to adjust our family budget - but it at least had the tradeoff off of more rest. This economic and job uncertainty is so unpleasant; we just had made one mental adjustment only to have the rug yanked out from under us. When we cannot predict the future, we stop all discretionary spending as a family since we cannot properly plan. This hurts our state and local economies as we curtail purchases and travel. Please get this sorted out soon - preferably via smaller furloughs that give more family time, albeit unpaid, rather than long-term pay cuts to hard-working people.
