Some UW-Madison students are feeling the direct effects of the states $1.1 billion deficit even before the state Legislature decides on how to distribute the cuts, as their jobs as part-time page positions for the Senate will no longer exist following June 1.
More than 40 limited-term employees, who consist primarily of students and make up 80 percent of the Senate staff under Sergeant-at-Arms Jon Hochkammer, will be let go due to a budget directive from the Senate Chief Clerk's Office, Hochkammer said.
\The State has a $1.1 billion deficit and we're going to have to cut positions; it doesn't matter when the budget is passed,"" he said.
Staffers were told about the cuts a few months ago according to UW-Madison junior Peter Colclasure.
""Jon was really nice about telling each individual employee in person, rather than through a memo or less personal means,"" he said. ""I'm just wondering how they're going to find time to manage everything.""
The Senate will be left with 12 full-time staffers to run errands, copy files and do other tasks that attempt to ease the burden on the individual Senator's staff according to Hochkammer.
""Individual legislative aides will have to take on an enormous amount of new responsibilities,"" Colclasure said.
Students who possess jobs as pages in the Assembly will experience a similar situation though Assembly Sergeant-at-Arms Denise Solie said she hoped the cuts will be less drastic.
""Will we have a layoff? The simple answer is 'yes,'"" she said. ""But my hope is that it won't be as severe as the Senate.""
Solie cited the size of the Assembly, which has 99 members in it, three times that of the Senate, along with previous layoffs and new technology as the primary reasons the she did not expect the deficit to hit her staff as hard.
""The difference between the Assembly and the Senate is just mammoth. We're light-years ahead of them in the terms of technology,"" she said. ""Last year we cut the equivalent of eight positions from the student ranks because we stopped using paper files and started using electronic files.""
Though Colclasure said he does not harbor any ill will toward the Senate, he does believe that the student pages will be wanted next year.
""It's an unfortunate situation, but at the same time I don't think that the Senate is anywhere near to being negligent or unfair,"" he said. ""I think that once winter comes and there's snow on the ground, the Senators are really going to miss the fact that we went out in the snow storms and got their lunch for them.\
