Washington attorney general employees across the state protest agency cuts, staff furloughs

OLYMPIA – Unionized employees of the Washington attorney general’s office staged protests at offices throughout the state Thursday over plans for a monthly furlough of state employees and cuts to the agency.

Standing outside the agency’s Olympia office, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Pitel said his message to the Legislature was “about what’s important to protect Washingtonians and the good work we do as an office.”

“Our civil rights division, our affirmative litigation’s division, our consumer protections division, they protect the civil rights and consumers of the state of Washington,” Pitel said. “Our juvenile litigation division protects children and vulnerable adults in Washington.”

As the state addresses a multibillion-dollar budget deficit, Gov. Bob Ferguson announced a plan that includes furloughing most state employees once a month for the next two years, which the governor said would save more than $300 million. Certain employees would be exempt from the furloughs, including Washington State Patrol troopers, prison staff and those at state hospitals.

“I believe this is necessary to preserve the funding for the compensation increases they earned and negotiated,” Ferguson said on Feb. 27. “I continue to support full funding for the collective bargaining increases. Furloughs, of course, reduce compensation without reducing salaries so that employees return to the compensation levels they have earned and bargained once we get through this budget crisis.”

Cutting the Attorney General’s office, Pitel said, “doesn’t really make fiscal sense in order to support Washingtonians.”

Cuts to the agency’s affirmative litigation divisions, Pitel said, would not only hinder the work of divisions that fund themselves, but it would also negatively impact the residents.

“This isn’t a business. Protecting children and removing them from vulnerable settings, protecting vulnerable adults is not a matter of fiscal obligation, it’s a matter of moral obligation in protecting Washingtonians,” Pitel said.

In a statement, Attorney General Nick Brown said that “We have a long way to go until the budget is finalized.”

“I am hopeful the Legislature can balance the budget without furloughing state workers and cutting funding to vital programs that Washingtonians depend on,” he said.

Outside of the agency’s Spokane office, eight state employees and union representatives gathered at noon.

The group milled about the sidewalk along Riverside Avenue near the Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes for a half-hour, sporting green Washington Federation of State Employees shirts and carrying signs that read “We stand with public workers, not billionaires,” and “No cuts, no furloughs.”

Jason Wear, a paralegal with the Spokane branch of the Attorney General’s Office, said the proposed furloughs would effectively nullify the wage increases for union members that the state agreed to during negotiations last fall.

“The governor has stated that he’s willing to honor our collective bargaining agreement,” Wear said. “But he wants to furlough us one day a month for the next two years, which essentially erases that. That would set us back, behind the cost of living today.”