I am in the Supreme Court chambers and will update in real time. I am going to apologize right now if there are any spelling mistakes. I promise to go back and spell check when it’s all said and done.
11:00am-this is the worst month for tax collections since 1961. Third worst 1st quarter that we have had.
-”We need to be prepared for some lean times ahead.”
-”We need to be serious about making some substantial budget cuts.”
-”I’m not going to ask for new taxes to solve this problem.”
11:05 am
-going to base his cuts on $468 million dollar deficit because this involves personnel cuts.
-going to maintain funding for pre-K-12. But there will not be new pre-K classrooms or any new BEP 2.0 money.
11:07am
-Reduce workforce in executive branch by 5 percent. That is 2,011 jobs.
-”We are planning to do this as a buyout. ”
-”If we can accomplish this on a voluntary basis, it has many good effects.”
11:08am
-”Whatever we do is going to be done with great respect for state government.”
-”We’re going to steer the ship and we have a plan to do so.”
-personnel cuts will save $64 million. The buyouts will come from the state reserves.
-There are significant cuts for Higher Education to the tune $55 million. That’s about 5 percent of their budget.
11:16am
-Governor says he has already talked to higher ed, and they understand they have to make this up through other ways besides tuition.
-He’s not going to go back and revisit capital projects or undoing salary raises.
-Begin the buyout process in early June. The process has to be open for up to 45 days for anyone over 40 years old. Then, they (employees who take the buyout) have seven days to rescind that buyout.
-Looking at administrative positions, rather than direct service positions. Not sure which departments are going to be affected the most. Concerned about Corrections and DCS. Not sure DCS can absorb further cuts.
-Not going to do across the board cut by a certain percentage. Each department will have a different number of cuts. It’s going to be more selective.
-”I need to get to $64 million. ” If not enough people take the buyouts, then there will be involuntary layoffs.
-Lessened the expansion of TennCare. It’s still going to expand some but not as much as it was going to.
Great job Cara, you guys are the only ones who took it seriously enough to put real information up on the web quickly. Thanks for taking Government seriously. State workers apprecite it!