‘We sat down, we reasoned together’

Also among the bills that Gov. Butch Otter signed into law today was SB 1227, the omnibus budget bill, which includes a series of final budget decisions including the final word on state employee pay for next year. “I particularly am proud to be able to sign 1227 today and pleased, because as many of you know … we’d had a disagreement on how much we were going to have to cut the pay of state employees and exactly how we were going to execute those cuts,” Otter said. “We sat down, we reasoned together, it took some effort, but we came up with what I think is a reasonable and forward-looking compromise in 1227.”

Rather than an across-the-board pay cut, as lawmakers originally had proposed, the bill calls for a 5 percent cut in statewide funding for personnel, with agency heads having full discretion as to how to implement the cut, whether it’s through furloughs, layoffs, or other measures. The measure also allows Otter, at his discretion, to dip into the state’s rainy-day funds to reduce the cut to 3 percent. That means individual agencies can appeal to the governor for help if they can’t achieve the full 5 percent cut.