{"id":51428,"date":"2020-09-22T23:29:47","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T05:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-workers-ordered-to-take-unpaid-furlough-amid-shortfall\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:56:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:56:17","slug":"colorado-workers-ordered-to-take-unpaid-furlough-amid-shortfall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-workers-ordered-to-take-unpaid-furlough-amid-shortfall\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado workers ordered to take unpaid furlough amid shortfall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis speaks to reporters at the governor\u2019s mansion in downtown Denver on July 9.<\/span>Jesse Paul\/The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Gov. Jared Polis announced Tuesday that he will order most of Colorado\u2019s 30,000 government employees to take an<\/p>\n

The move \u2014 expected to be formalized in an executive order \u2014 applies to executive branch employees making more than $50,000 a year and is tiered to lessen the impact on lower-wage workers and government services.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely it\u2019s a time for belt-tightening,\u201d Polis said. He called the tiered approach the \u201ccompassionate way to do a furlough.\u201d<\/p>\n

The possibility of furloughs loomed for months after Colorado lawmakers cut the state personnel budget by $58 million, or 5%, to help close a $3 billion budget shortfall after the coronavirus led to a temporary economic shutdown.<\/p>\n

But the flexibility lawmakers gave the Polis administration left a question about whether the furloughs were necessary or designed to open room for spending elsewhere in the budget. Most state agencies expected to find the personnel savings within the existing budget or by not filling vacant positions. And a new economic forecast<\/a> presented to lawmakers Friday found a rosier state revenue picture and a smaller projected deficit for the coming fiscal year.<\/p>\n

Even though the state is not seeing \u201cthe worst-case scenario that people were worried about,\u201d Polis said the state is looking at a \u201cvery tough budget year, this year and next year\u201d and needed to save money.<\/p>\n

The administration worked on the furloughs with Colorado WINS, the state employee union recently granted collective bargaining rights under a new law. Hilary Glasgow, the union\u2019s executive director, said the state \u201cwouldn\u2019t go to furloughs if there was a way around them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe need for public services is up while the funding for public services is down,\u201d she said, citing the pandemic and related economic impacts. \u201cThe need to mitigate that is going to continue to be very hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Staff writer Jesse Paul contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, journalist-owned news outlet exploring issues of statewide interest. Sign up for a newsletter and read more at coloradosun.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Polis: \u2018It\u2019s a time for belt tightening\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[233,685,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-51428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87956,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51428\/revisions\/87956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51428"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=51428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}