No capital budget means no jobs for 52 state workers
If the March deadline isnt met, as many as 300 more employees could be out of work.
OLYMPIA Theyve been laid off, steered into a different job or had their work hours reduced.
They are the 52 state employees directly affected, so far, by a political stalemate thats prevented passage of a new two-year $4.2 billion dollar capital budget until deep disagreement on water rights policy is resolved.
Each workers salary was tied to the construction budget that expired June 30. Absent a new spending plan, funding for their jobs no longer exists. They had been working in agencies like state parks and the Department of Enterprise Services, as well as The Evergreen State College and Washington State Historical Society.
When Gov. Jay Inslee proposed his supplemental budget for 2018 earlier this month, he pressed lawmakers to settle their differences and enact a new capital budget in the first week of the legislative session.
This is not acceptable to the people of the state of Washington, he said. Weve already had to lay off 52 state workers (who) in this holiday season are unemployed because of the hijinks going on here in the Legislature.
Since July 1, which is the start of the fiscal year, 37 permanent employees and 15 non-permanent workers have been laid off, according to information compiled by the Office of Financial Management.
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The result of my way or the highway Republicanism.