Employees brace for withheld paychecks

By Mike Joseph

- mjoseph@centredaily.com

BELLEFONTE — Everything was business as usual Wednesday at the state's road maintenance garage — everything except the peace of mind that comes with a job that pays.

CDT/Christopher Weddle

Don Robinson, PennDOT mechanic, works on the engine of a truck in the Centre County maintenance garage in Bellefonte on Wednesday, July 1, 2009. CDT/Christopher Weddle

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“We’re not going to get a paycheck, so how’re you going to pay your bills?” said mechanic Daniel Pryle, one of 108 state Department of Transportation employees at the East Bishop Street garage.

Jeff Harter, union rep for most of the employees, said: “There’s a lot of joking about it — kidding about it — but the concern’s there.”

And custodian Emma Ferguson interrupted her work with a mop and a bucket to add: “Everyone is in the back of our mind — well, worried about it because how many of us can stand several weeks without pay? Not many of us.”

The PennDOT garage — the center of operations in Centre County for repairing roads in the summer and clearing them of snow and ice in the winter — is one of two major state job sites in the county. The other, Rockview state prison in Benner Township, employs 600 people, mostly guards.

For workers at both, Wednesday was the first day of a new fiscal year for which their employer does not have a budget, and their first workday for which they will not be paid as long as negotiations between the governor and legislators remain stalemated.

At Rockview, where more than 2,000 state inmates are incarcerated, business manager Frank Dougherty said guards and the rest of the institution’s 600 employees plan to work without pay if the impasse persists after they receive a normal paycheck on July 10 and a partial check on July 24.

“At this point we’re assuming that everybody’s going to show up and work, and nobody has said otherwise,” Dougherty said. “It’ll be tough for our people but at this point the question of not showing up has never come up. The people are worried about paying bills but they’re taking it very well — the people I talked to are taking it better than I expected, actually.”

The PennDOT employees said their last full paycheck will come Friday, followed by a partial, one-week paycheck two Fridays later, after which their pay will stop. Like their Rockview counterparts, PennDOT employees looked with some sense of relief toward a Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union offer of one interest-free $1,000 loan per employee.

But that bit of help couldn’t compensate for the worry. The possibility of payless workweeks ahead coupled with this year’s extremely weak economy thrust the state budget crisis to the front of PennDOT workers’ minds and exposed the thin economic margins folks live on.

PennDOT union rep Harter called himself lucky because his wife has a job. But he said they have nonetheless eliminated all dining out and summer plans to go camping. Other employees, he said, are not so fortunate.

“A lot of people are panicking about how they’re going to pay their bills,” he said. “It’s amazing how many people live check to check — this has just brought that out.”

State employees will get their back pay after a budget is enacted, but that process will deduct taxes at a higher rate because the lump sum payment will he higher, Harter said.

“It puts you in a higher tax bracket,” he said. “It’d be like I’m making $60,000 a year instead of $30,000.”

Wednesday’s worries in the PennDOT garage were not about paychecks alone.

PennDOT on June 10 — the end of a billing cycle — cut off the purchase of spare parts for its 45 trucks and other equipment. On top of that, PennDOT generally keeps its parts inventory low.

That means if a truck or backhoe goes down and needs a part, it won’t get it until after a budget is enacted, PennDOT managers and employees said Wednesday. Vendors have offered to provide parts on credit, but PennDOT has had to turn them down.

“To follow purchase procedures, we can’t have the part in hand without paying the vendor,” said Dan Dibble, equipment manager.

On Wednesday, three or four trucks, a mower and a wood-chipper were down — not an unusual number of equipment pieces in disrepair at one moment in the summer, but a cause for concern if the budget impasse and consequent lack of parts persist.

Lawmakers won’t get their next paycheck until after the state budget is enacted, but they still are eligible for per diem expenses of $158 a day for each day they are in the state capital trying to agree on a budget, the state controller’s office said.

The per diem claim is available to any lawmaker who lives at least 50 miles from Harrisburg — about 190 of the 253 House and Senate members, including the five with Centre County constituents.

Legislative staffers for the 253 lawmakers, unlike other state employees, will continue to receive paychecks, as the Associated Press reported they would be paid out of a legislative reserve fund.