Almost everyone that has seen the budget deficit New York faces has at least a few ideas on how to solve it. Tax the rich, tax the poor, cut services for the poor and relying on Barack Obama are the four basic avenues. So in Assemblyman Michael Gianaris' case, proposing to cut the work week by one day for state employees, is he thinking out of the box?
From The NY Times:
The assemblyman, Michael N. Gianaris, said on Sunday that even though his plan called for no pay cuts and would exclude education, transportation, public safety and hospital workers, it would save the state some $30 million a year in building maintenance and transportation costs.
Under the plan, all state agencies providing what Mr. Gianaris called nonessential services would change their working hours to 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday instead of from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. five days a week. New York has about 237,000 full-time state employees, according to census figures.
Mr. Gianaris said electricity and fuel bills would be lower because agency offices would be dark and vehicles would not be driven on the fifth day.
Besides all of these agencies being closed one business day a week, they are all technically open the same amount of hours. Of course, $30 million isn't really that much when you are talking about closing a $15 billion dollar gap. The unions seem open to discussing it and knowing Governor Paterson, he'd welcome to at least hear about how to cut more money from the state's tab. For me though, I'm still more set on the first option above...tax the rich.
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