Four-day weeks might resolve deficit

John Wood, Carson City

Thursday, June 26, 2008 | 2:02 a.m.

I have been pondering how I would work to balance the state budget if I were in the hot seat.

The first suggestion is that all state workers who are considered “nonessential” work four 10-hour days. This would save a lot in utilities. A side benefit would be that people could conduct state business after normal daytime hours and not have to miss work.

For the state workers this would mean savings on fuel and auto maintenance. Perhaps in the long run, too, the roads would not get so beat up and there would be savings on repairs.

I would do the same for the K-12 school system. Here, we would save by operating the buses only four days a week. That should realize a full 20 percent savings on fuel costs and I would expect the same on maintenance.

The real benefit would be extra instructional time every day.

Now, I realize that some workers may have a contract or union agreement that precludes a 10-hour workday, or specifies overtime pay for the two extra hours. I would hope that in light of the benefit to the worker they would voluntarily rescind this.

Let’s get together and solve this budget problem. We have enough native ability to do so even if our Legislature doesn’t. If we let our representatives know our wishes, perhaps they will truly represent us and not sell us out to more regulation and new or higher taxes.