Governor Bill Walker released his Fiscal Year 2016 budget which showed $132 million in cuts from agencies’ unrestricted general fund operating budgets.
Walker: “It’s one that hurts and it’s not one that I enjoyed presenting but it’s the one that’s necessary. At roughly a $10million dollar a day deficit we had to do something, we had to make some step forward.”
During that press conference Office of Management and Budget Director Pat Pitney said out of the 329 state positions in the proposed cuts she anticipates over half to be currently vacant. She said they are still collecting the exact numbers.
Pitney was asked to give some examples of the most and least impacted: K-12 up to University education and Department of Natural Resources were the least impacted. She said some of the fiscally harder hit areas were the Department of Transportation and Health and Social Services due to the magnitude of their budgets.
Percentage wise the Department of Labor and Work Force Development was one of the hardest hit behind the Governor’s administration.
Walker has proposed cutting $239 million in unrestricted state general funds for agency costs from the current year. The total proposed budget authorization is $12.8 billion.
Final amendments from administration are due by February 18.