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.