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Lawrence Co. officials want workers to take unpaid days
NEW CASTLE, Pa. — Lawrence County commissioners announced they plan to ask employees to take off 12 unpaid days between now and the end of the year to save the county money.
A scheduled vote of AFSCME Local 2902 today was delayed to give commissioners time to meet with an AFSCME representative, and the other union representing county employees, the Construction and General Laborers Union Local 964, is set to vote on the proposal Wednesday. Sixty percent of the county’s 400 employees are represented by unions.
To complicate matters, Commissioner Steve Craig also said Friday he heard there might be a breakthrough in the state budget impasse. This would be good news because the drying up of funds from Harrisburg for local programs is the main reason for the county’s current budget problems. However, he added that at this point, even a resolved state budget will not solve the county’s financial problems. Cutbacks to local programs are expected to be a part of the budget when it is finally passed, and in any case, it will take some time for the money to start flowing from Harrisburg again.
He said there is still the possibility of layoffs and that the budget situation has “a lot of moving parts.”
Although closing the courthouse one day per week had been discussed, Craig said rescheduling of court hearings and readvertising of a tax sale made that plan impractical.
Commissioners have said they are running out of money because they are being forced to use general-fund dollars to keep mandated services such as Children and Youth Services and Mental Health/Retardation operating. The state pays for approximately 80 percent of those services and partially funds many others. But state legislators and Gov. Ed Rendell have been deadlocked on the 2009-10 state budget, which should have passed July 1, and as a result, no state money is coming in for those services.
At their Thursday caucus meeting, commissioners also issued a public invitation to the area’s five state legislators to attend upcoming commissioners’ meetings to explain why the Legislature has failed thus far to pass a budget.
Commissioners agreed to notify state Reps. Chris Sainato, Jaret A. Gibbons and Michele Brooks and state Sens. Bob Robins and Elder Vogel Jr. they want them all to attend a commissioners’ meeting or caucus over the next weeks and face the public. Craig said they need to explain “why we are having to spread the pain to employees and the public for their not passing the budget.”
Also Thursday, commissioners learned that Patches Place, a homeless-outreach program that has operated at 217 N. Mill Street since Jan. 1, will close Sept. 15 because of the state budget problems. It is the first local agency so affected.
Executive Director Sandy Hause said after the meeting that the program is run with County Metal Health/Retardation funds that come from the state, and those have dried up because of the lack of a state budget.
The program employs nine and serves 50 homeless, poor, drug- and alcohol-dependent or mentally ill clients a day, providing them with rehabilitation, food and everyday items such as sleeping bags, tents, tarps and hunters’ heating packs.
Hause said the shutdown is not permanent and that county officials have assured her the program will be back. But she said that even if the budget were approved tomorrow, it could be eight weeks before the money starts coming in again.