With a federal judge temporarily blocking Governor Paterson's move to force state workers to take one day unpaid furloughs, other options are being considered. Yesterday the Governor was opaque on how the state might operate without a budget when the money runs out at the end of the month, but Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch hasn't pulled punches. On Tuesday he said that if furloughs were ruled illegal, the Paterson administration might simply lay off state workers. Paterson has not ruled out that option, and yesterday he said he was determined to fight for furloughs.
"We are going to question this seeming trend when the judge tells the CEO of the state what they can legislate and what they can’t," Paterson said in a radio interview as he looked ahead to a May 26th court date. "Maybe [Judge Lawrence Kahn] is just saying, ‘Look, everybody stand down until I’ve had a chance to rule on this.' I just found it to be unusual... Because if these individuals are frustrated now, they have no idea how angry and anxious they'll be if the state runs out of money and you start having first-come-first-serve payments and difficulties all over the place."
"The governor's in a box now," Senator Diane Savino, a Staten Island Democrat and former union leader, tells the Times Union. "He's poisoned the bargaining table and done more harm than good—it's unlikely any of his proposals will now be approved by the rank-and-file." Yesterday Judge Kahn ruled that the furloughs violated collective bargaining agreements and would cause "irreperable harm" to workers. But Paterson says Kahn is incorrect to assert that furloughs would cost employees 20 percent of their salaries; Paterson claims his plan would only cost workers about 3 percent of their wages if carried out for the eight weeks he intended.
The Times reports that Paterson will have no easier time enacting layoffs because of a deal the governor made with unions last year to forgo layoffs "in exchange for measures that would reduce the state’s long-term pension costs. But some legal experts said that the governor would have a better chance of winning a court fight over layoffs, because the deal with unions was not part of a collective bargaining agreement and might not be considered as binding as if it had been included in a labor contract."
Yesterday two dozen Democratic Assembly members opposed to the furloughs stormed Paterson's Capitol office to stage a "spontaneous" sit-in until Paterson met with him, which he finally did. The governor told them they should be staging a sit-in at Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver instead, arguing that Silver "has not had substantive negotiations with Paterson over the budget in some time."
