July 13, 2011

Starting July 1st, 37 state employees lost their jobs due to budget cuts. But this is not enough for Republican, Ben Kieckhefer who thinks the budget should have resulted in mass lay offs and is disappointed. Unthinking partisan politics never fails or even takes a break for the summer.

We need to understand that:

There were about 21,000 regular state employees a few years ago and now there are just 17,000, a reduction of  19 percent. Over the next two years there will be a reduction of 665 full-time positions a 4 percent reduction from today’s levels.

State employees have taken pay cuts, must pay higher contributions to their retirement, have had their salaries frozen the past few years and must accept significantly reduced health benefits. All this is called the State Employee Tax which is about 10 percent of their salaries.

State government must provide a health and safety net and can’t just cut staff like a business or even go out of business when things get bad. It’s not about widgets, but about basic services that affect all Nevadans, especially the poor.

The demand for government services goes up instead of down in a recession. The is counter to what most businesses face.

Nevada has the lowest number of state employees per person in the nation This is true even during high growth which indicates our state government isn’t very big.

State employees are lower paid than local government employees and have bigger workloads.

All this is not enough for some.