More than 4,000 people are employed by the government.
Press Secretary Charles P. Reyes Jr. said the work hours of some contractual employees have been cut already.
“We have a number of employees in the executive branch who are already doing reduced hours,” said Reyes. “But I think there are not enough hours to reduce anymore.”
The governor vetoed the Fiscal Year 2009 budget of $148 million because he said it does not have provisions for the imposition of austerity and unpaid holidays.
But the Legislature overrode the veto and the budget bill is now Public Law 16-32.
Reyes said the contractual employees are actually caught in the political crossfire between Gov. Benigno R. Fitial, who is seeking re-election, and the Legislature.
“The Legislature wants to put the governor in a bad position, trying to force him to make cuts in an election year so that he would lose votes. That’s really the game that is being played here,” he told the Variety in an interview yesterday.
“They are trying to blame the governor for something that is not his fault. They are trying to blame the governor for his failure to pass the budget that we need with the austerity measures,” he added.
The governor met with his cabinet members on Monday.
Each department head was asked to submit a list of positions that could be eliminated to keep their spending within the newly passed fiscal year budget of $148 million — down by more than $15 million compared to previous years’ budget under the continuing resolution.
Esther Fleming, the governor’s special assistant for administration who is also the special assistant for the Office of Management and Budget, is tasked to coordinate with the department heads to carry out the furloughs.
Thus far, no furlough letter within the executive branch has been issued.
Reyes said lawmakers knew that the austerity holidays are needed and were approved during FY 2006.
“We’re convinced that there’s political motivation behind this. It’s not based on economics. They accepted it before and now they don’t want to accept it,” he said.
He added: “Before we also made clear that we would have to furlough people and the governor issued a notice even to civil service people at that time pursuant to the regulations. But at the last moment they agreed not to do it. [But this time] we were not successful in getting the consensus of the Legislature.”
With the garment manufacturing industry officially dead and the tourism industry still struggling to survive, Reyes said government revenues have steadily declined.
“The fact of the matter is since the first time that we imposed the austerity holidays, our government revenues have diminished substantially. In fact, we had to revise our fiscal budget, again and again. There has not been a fiscal year that had gone by where we didn’t have to reduce our budget,” he said.
