with all but one employee assistant public defender and senior litigator Shanlyn Park on furlough. Park takes her furlough on another day of the week.
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Lt. Gov. Shan Tsutsui announced Friday that the state has imposed a temporary hiring freeze on some state departments in response to the partial shutdown of the federal government.
Tsutsui described the hiring freeze as a short-term measure to minimize the shutdown’s impact.
The hiring freeze does not apply to critical positions at the Hawaii State Hospital, Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility and state Department of Health. The Abercrombie administration does not have the authority to impose a freeze at the state Department of Education, the University of Hawaii and the Hawaii Health Systems Corp., which are overseen by independent boards, but has asked for similar precautionary measures.
"As the federal government shutdown approaches its third week, we continued discussions with department directors and decided to take a proactive approach toward minimizing the impact on our state by instituting a temporary hiring freeze on vacant positions," Tsutsui, who is acting governor while Gov. Neil Abercrombie is traveling out of state, said in a statement. "The deadline for raising the federal debt ceiling is also quickly approaching, and we are acting now to ensure we are best prepared for the potential financial impact."
Kalbert Young, the state’s budget director, said the hiring freeze is one of several steps to get state departments to slow spending in the event the shutdown continues. State departments are using state money to cover some federal functions, with the expectation that the state will be reimbursed by the federal government once the shutdown is over.
"It’s really just a policy measure to get departments to start curtailing spending so that greater resources can be reallocated towards covering the federal costs," he said.
Young said the hiring freeze, imposed through an executive memo from Tsutsui on Wednesday, would not affect anyone who has already received job offers from the state or interrupt state departments already in the recruitment process. Potential new hires, however, may not be able to start work until January.