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This is tricky. True it's only one dollar, but then it goes to 2, then 5, then 10, then 20. Where does it end? When the state is pulling $50 a month out of your pay check, will you still consider it a good idea?

Good grief. State employees have the most secure jobs in the world, and they're asked to give up one half of one percent of their salary in a year when the state is running huge deficits. That's reasonable by any standard.

Keith, see if you can convince Bev to kick it up 10 cents on returns that the filer's last name starts with the letters between A and M and send it to me. I want a new Tahoe before the bamster drops that line.

Make that 11 cents. (I want a DVD player and factory gps system)

does seem ridiculous brian444, my business was down more than .5% last year over 2007 and my wife lost her job. Many have no jobs at all. Hint to state employees, tighten your belts.

rescuechick has a good point, remember the "temporary" sales tax increase during the last economic slowdown? It's still here.

The writer of this LTE must be a govmint employee 'cause it's so easy for him to spend money earned by others -

Welcome to the world of being a singled-out tax base. There are other groups like yours that have taken a tax hit. However, state job are good jobs . . . good pay, great benefits, pension, etc. Better than being eliminated.

I'm a State employee and this sounds boneheaded even to me. I've always felt that across the board budget cuts were the lazy way to manage the State budget, but we as State employees should be thankful to have jobs. .5% was reasonable and this is a true budget emergency. Taxpayers already carry the burden of paying for our salaries, I don't think that it is too much to ask for us to make a small sacrifice for the public good.

"it's so easy for him to spend money earned by others" - As a former state employee, let me tell you Monica..I EARNED every dime I was paid and then some AND I also paid state taxes, fyi...high school teacher. I loved my job up until merger, block scheduling, and busing for diversity, so I had a good run. .5 percent is not a huge amount of any state employee's pay. Seems reasonable to me. Of course, I am not employed any longer, so that is easy for me to say.

Wondering how they are going to enforce the 10 day furlough for teachers...should be interesting.

oops..make that a 10 hour furlough...not difficult to do on workdays, so problem solved.

Losing 1/2 a percent of your income isn't traumatic. However, being told you have to pay back 1/2 a percent of your annual salary a year after you've earned it is a different thing. Being told your next paycheck will be $250 less kinda sucks too.

Remember the AIG folks who HAD to be paid their bonuses because they had already done the work. Well, state employees have already worked nearly the full year and now you're telling them they have to pay it back.

A more reasonable approach would be to make pay cuts effective going forward.

Even better would be to actually do directed cuts that addressed inefficiences and waste.

This letter, though, is pretty ridiculous.

North Carolina is one of the highest taxed states in the nation. We've got a lottery. Heck, our county is one of the highest taxed counties in the state.

So, where's all the money? The answer is NOT to take more money from taxpayers. The answer is to address overspending by the government.

0.5% may not sound like much. But it IS inherently unfair that I should have to give back part of my salary to fix the budget, while other taxpayers don't.

Yes, I'm glad there have been no layoffs where I work. But they could come. My job is not guaranteed, and I do worry.

You can't get past the fact that state workers are being asked to pony up to fix the budget so Gov. Perdue can avoid a tax increase for all NC residents. That's not fair.

Right now the pain is minimal. There but minimal. But it's been made clear to me that Perdue is not done yet. I fully expect another pay cut for the next fiscal year.