Statewide budget cuts passed in June continue to affect state employees, including those at UW-Madison.
According to a statement from state Rep. Mike Sheridan, D-Janesville, the $3 billion cuts made in June were the largest in Wisconsin's history.
""We were facing a historic deficit, and some hard decisions had to be made,"" Sheridan's spokesperson Rebekah Sweeney said. ""Most agencies received a 6-percent spending cut, although we tried to protect education and local government from the deepest cuts.""
With an across-the-board agency spending cut of 6.1 percent, state employees have seen cuts resulting in furlough days and even layoffs.
""Virtually every state employee has had to take furloughs or will have to take 16 day furloughs over the course of two years,"" John Anderson, state Sen. Mark Miller's, D-Monona, spokesperson said. ""It's had an effect on every single state employee, but that's part of balancing the state budget.""
According to Carla Vigue, communications director of the Wisconsin Department of Administration, job vacancies have increased from 2,394 to 3,154 between November 2008 and November 2009, an increase of 32 percent.
Vigue said that as of Oct. 31, there have been 211 layoffs and at-risk lay-off notifications. She said she expects this number to rise.
David Giroux, UW System spokesperson, said that although some layoffs have occurred throughout the UW System, the schools have dealt with the budget cuts in other ways.
""[The cuts] have led to and will lead to larger class sizes, fewer sections of individual classes being offered and longer lines at campus offices,"" Giroux said. ""They are things that you might notice in small ways, but [when] you step back and look at how common these occurrences are, you can see the scope of this cut.""
Giroux said that the way the cuts are dealt with ""varies by campus and varies at each campus by college and by school. It's all very local and specific.""
