The state government leadership -- Governor & legislators - who created the state furlough plan have made a mess of it. As with most government run programs, IF anyone bothered to monitor all the 'costs' associated with furlough day planning, managing, scheduling, tracking, changing processes, fixing process change errors, catching up (OT) on workload backlogs, and then dealing with all the bad publicity & questions for eight days a year over th next two years, the taxpayer would quickly see this was a costly mistake. The state leadership chose to establish statewide furlough days only 8 of the 16 total days. They left those other 8 days up to each of the agencies to schedule. Each agency & the UW came up with a different plan. Believe it or not, WI state gov't is highly automated with many system / process integration points executed each day. Disengaging these connections due to the furloughs will potentially create a huge mess for the citizens programs before it all over. This is similar to the Y2K issues averted with years of prior planning in the past decade. Had the state's illustrious leaders just treated furloughs as unpaid state holidays and shut gov't down all 16 furlough days, things would most likely be OK and the taxpayers would have saved zillions from both labor and statewide building operation costs. But NOOOOOO, agencies are trying to keep their services running while forcing staff to take days off without pay; and letting each agency create its own shutdown schedule while EXPECTING nothing to break. Good luck Wisconsinites! They always say, 'you never realize what you have, until it's taken away from you.' God help us all!

My agency has just announced that there will be some layoffs as well.

Oops...misread your blog.... The correct answer is False. The employees are not allowed to apply for unemployment benefits for the furloughed time.

True. They are doling out the furloughs in such a manner that the employees do not qualify for unemployment benefits. Each Department has its' own individual rules regarding the implementation of the furloughs, but for the most part, no one employee can take more than 8 hours of furlough in one work week....ie doesn't qualify for unemployment benefits.

I've heard that those furloughed can file for unemployment benefits. True/False? Anybody?

$224 million is small when compared to the budget as a whole, but much bigger when comparing it to the $5 billion or so deficit. It will still take many similar sized actions to achieve a balance and payroll is a huge portion of the overall spending. Are you suggesting there are some billion $ cuts we can make? It is a less harmful way than laying off 3733 workers making $60,000 a year.
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As for the question at hand, they are handling it terribly. Keep the offices open with a reduce staff. Business handles it this way. Another reason why a lot of the state functions need to be bid out to contractors instead of each department building their own little empires.

How can anyone really view this as good public policy? The furloughs amount to a payroll savings of $224 million, which sounds like a lot at first, but is small potatoes when compared to the entire size of the state budget: over $40 billion. That $224 million, when divided among all state taxpayers over the course of the two-year budget cycle amounts to a savings of approximately 75 cents per week per taxpayer. In order to give us this huge savings, 69,000 families who are supported by state workers are docked three weeks' pay. This is on top of pay increases over the last ten years that have not kept up with inflation. In real terms, I am making less money now than I was in 2000.
Of course various pet building projects in legislators' districts got millions in funding in this same budget. If there really is such a big emergency that 69,000 families have to take a loss in income, why aren't these projects being put on hold for two years?
There is no "budget emergency." This has been predicted for years. For the last two decades the legislature and three governors have kicked a structural deficit in the state budget down the road, with the result that that deficit has gotten bigger and bigger, and the wise folk in the Capitol knew that if the economy ever hit hard times, disaster would result-- and here we are.
The furloughs save everyone almost nothing but hurt the families of state employees quite a lot!

Furloughs are another way of saying the Governor and state legislature are clueless when it comes to balancing a budget.