We have been furloughed-a-plenty. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be!

Let’s talk about the state employees who are being furloughed:
The SCDOE school bus mechanic who makes $13.79/hr. to repair 20 year old buses, or the DSS daycare inspector who is raking in a princely $13.36/hr. to face angry childcare center directors who balk at their fines…..or the thousands of other state servant/employees who are working in the 4th and 5th pay band world. These people are not overpaid or poster children for wasteful government spending.

Somehow balancing the budget on their backs seems immoral. What should we cut their pay to….$11/hr. or minimum wage maybe?

IF, we are going to balance the budget on the back of state workers….there’s a better way….have EVERYONE from the Governor to the most poorly paid state employee take a 4% paycut….make it fair….and allow Legislators feel some of the pain they have created…well, maybe just a little pinch!

Our agency will probably get additional days of Mandatory Furlough January 1st. Happy New Year!

This, then, begs the question whether agencies provide a “vital” service. I believe a zero-based review of the mission of each state agency is in order to find and eliminate duplication of effort and unnecessary bureaucracy – which I believe will be substantial. In the case of health care alone, the $22 million in annual savings would be a start.

$22 million out of a $7 billion budget represents only .03%. While, on a percentage basis, this isn’t a big number, $22 million is still a lot of money in raw, taxpayer-provided dollars that deliver no real benefit to the citizens of SC.

I have yet to attend any legislative function or be invited to one, because quite honestly i wouldn’t find them fun in the least, or at least I wouldn’t think so.

You open your site to spout your opinions, often times of which I agree, and for people to comment, and obviously not everyone will agree with you. I appreciate you pointing out the grammar lesson, but what I would really like is a more educated response as to why we need to consolidate these agencies, other than we save $32 million, by your account.

Where would all those jobs go? Would they join the unemployment line costing us more money? Where would the savings be? Would it all be controlled by the governor? Would we have multiple “heads” running the divisions? Please lay out a plan for us to see other than spouting out what seems to the average Joe a quite simple solution, but in reality is complex. Or maybe that is just your intent all along, just confuse the public into believing of we listen to you (mouthpiece for Mark Sanford) on everything, then we would be the only state in the country NOT facing economic hard times.

Here’s the unfiltered view from the front line: Furloughs are the COWARDS way of reducing spending.

Note to “leaders”: Get out of the corner office, walk amongst the cubicles, find the dead weight, and show them the door.

Morale will instantly improve since dozens of folks are fed up with having to pick up the slack from Dead Weight Drama-queen Debbie and Dead Weight Dufus David that show up and do NO work. Actual productivity will improve even though payroll is cut because the real workers won’t be so ticked off at management for allowing such dead weight to fester for years.

Yeah, this is the group that telling us how to run government. The people who brought us this economic miracle:

http://www.thestate.com/…/627124.html

and this http://www.thestate.com/…/628792.html

This is his response:

http://www.thestate.com/…/624907.html

Enjoy your time in the political wilderness. You’re going to be there for a long time.

I wonder if the simplistic thing also applies to this statement: “South Carolina has no fewer than eight state agencies that provide health care services, and while you’d think that such duplication and overlap might get the job done, we’re actually the third worst state in the nation when it comes to keeping people healthy.”

Maybe we have poorer health than most states because we have more ignorance and poverty, so our health care agencies have a harder row to hoe, which is why we need them in the first place, which makes them necessary and not wasteful expenses.