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Kansas State Employee Furloughs To Start June 7 If There's No Budget

Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration says many state workers will be sent home without pay starting June 7 if Kansas lawmakers don’t pass a budget.

Brownback’s budget director, Shawn Sullivan, told a group of Senators at the Statehouse Sunday that the furloughs would happen unless a Kansas budget is in place by 11:59 p.m. on Saturday.

“We don’t have authority to pay employees past June 6 without a budget giving us authority to do that,” says Sullivan.

He  says state agencies have been working to identify which workers are non-essential and can be sent home. “There’s still public safety and other elements, I mean we can’t let prison guards go and inmates go,” says Sullivan. Lawmakers could pass a short-term funding bill to keep state workers on the job while legislators finish work on the budget.

As the Kansas News Service managing editor, I help our statewide team of reporters find the important issues and breaking news that impact people statewide. We refine our daily stories to illustrate the issues and events that affect the health, well-being and economic stability of the people of Kansas. Email me at skoranda@kcur.org.
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