Furlough math
Gov. Martin O’Malley and Maryland legislators want state employees facing unpaid days off this holiday season to know they feel their pain.
The guv and the others are taking a pay cut, too, after all.
But not all are taking quite as big a cut, relatively speaking. State workers will lose full before-taxes pay while O’Malley and the legislators are giving back an amount based on their net, or after-taxes, income.
The give-backs are supposed to help offset an expected $400 million budget deficit.
O’Malley furloughed about 67,000 state employees for between two and five days. Employees making under $40,000 must take Dec. 25 and Jan 2 off without pay.
State employees making between $40,000 and $59,999 get the same two days off, plus they must take an additional two days off sometime before June 30, the end of the current fiscal year.
State employees making $60,000 or more must take three additional days, for a total of five.
State workers lose the full day’s wages before taxes, “which means individuals aren’t taxed on income that they don’t receive,” Rick Abbruzzese, a spokesman for O’Malley wrote in an e-mail.
O’Malley will contribute only about 68 percent of one week of his $150,000 salary.
Earlier this month, O’Malley announced that he would forgo five days of his pay. He wrote a check to the state for $1,956.38. The amount the governor paid was calculated by the state comptroller’s office, according to Abbruzzese.
The before-tax amount, 1/52 of O’Malley’s salary, equals about $2,884.62 per week (slightly rounded up).
Most state legislators are in a similar situation.
House Speaker Michael Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller announced last week they were voluntarily returning five days pay to the state. They encouraged other legislators to forgo between one and five days of legislators’ $43,500 salary The daily rate of pay — after taxes — for legislators, which was calculated by the Department of Legislative services, is $120.84, or $604.20, for five days. (The before-tax amount is $836. 54, or about $167.31 per day, slightly rounded up.)
(It should be noted that many legislators are voluntarily forgoing five days pay even though at their pay rate, if they were state employees, they would only be required to surrender four days unpaid leave. Even so, the amount paid back for five days is $65 less than four days at the before tax rate. )
Some legislators are offering up their salaries at the pre-tax rate.
Twenty of the 29 senators and delegates, who represent Baltimore County, responded to an informal poll on how they plan to participate in the voluntary furloughs. Of those, Dels. Susan Aumann and Bill Frank, Republicans who represent the 42nd District, said they were forgoing five days pay at the before-tax rate.
Frank said he was rounding his figure up to $850 and splitting the amount equally between three charities.
Aumann, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, is sending her salary back to the state to offset the budget deficit.
This version contains a correction on the amount the governor is contributing as part of the furlough.