Plain Dealer On Furloughs

An editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Ohio, by furloughing federally paid state employees who screen Social Security disability claims, is penny-foolish and pound-foolish, too, the U.S. Social Security commissioner said during a recent visit to Cleveland. He has a point.

Because of Ohio's budget troubles, state employees represented by five unions agreed last year to take 10 unpaid days off per year for two years. They're "cost savings days," but everyone calls them furlough days.

Bureau of Disability Determination employees are among those taking furloughs, though they are paid by the federal government, not Ohio. Commissioner of Social Security Michael Astrue said that by furloughing them, Ohio will lose $6.9 million in federal money.

Furloughs will also add to their case-review backlogs. To their credit, state employees have in the last four months closed 5,000 more disability cases than in the year-earlier period. But in the meantime, more cases are being filed. From 2008 to last year, Ohio claims rose 59 percent, far steeper than the 40 percent U.S. rate. Ohio's backlog nears 46,000 cases.

A Strickland spokeswoman said Ohio can't exempt Disability Determination employees from furloughs because the state's contracts with employee unions require "parity" in givebacks. That is, givebacks must be uniform. Gov. Ted Strickland himself warned last summer that violating parity could jeopardize the $90.3 million in give-backs his negotiators won from unionized state employees.

But an Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (AFSCME Local 11) spokesman says that its contract gives a state agency the right, if it cites an "operational need," to prevent an employee from taking furlough days. (Then, at the end of each fiscal year, the agency must pay an employee for time worked on "prevented" furlough days.) And the union spokeswoman said such an agency decision wouldn't require reopening the union's contract with the state.

Strickland's spokeswoman countered that the contract clause in question "was intended for extraordinary, specific operational emergencies" -- say, if a furlough day for workers in the Taxation Department's mailroom fell on April 15. Contract wording, however, doesn't appear to be nearly that limiting.

She added that trying to spare an entire class of state employees (such as those reviewing disability applications) from furlough days "would likely lead to legal challenges that [it] violated parity."

The Strickland administration, possibly fearing union grumbling in an election year, is lawyering a molehill into a mountain.''