In an effort to deal with Governor Tim Pawlenty's anticipated unilateral budget unallotments, the Redwood County commissioners passed a tentative resolution Tuesday that would buy the county a little time.
The resolution basically gives all county employees, elected, hourly, salaried, union and non-union alike a heads-up the county board is looking at the potential use of furloughs as preferred method of reducing labor cost, instead of layoffs.
“We won’t be able to plug any numbers in until we get better acknowledgment from the state on how much they are going to cut from our local government aid (LGA),” said Al Kokesch, Redwood County Board chair. “We don’t know whether that will be $300,000, $400,000, $600,000 or the whole works.
“So we hope we have the numbers from the state by the end of June to the first part of July. We want the employees to know that this is our plan for 2010.”
Kokesch said once the board knows how much money would be cut from the state, it can then decide how many days each county employee would have to take in unpaid furloughs to make up the difference the state cuts.
“Our payroll is approximately $10 million  a year,” Kokesch said. “Next year’s raises are about five percent. So that is about a half-million in raises.
“But to keep payroll flat, we’ll take that away with the furlough.
“We don’t know how many days that will work out to.”