SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California drivers who needed to renew their licenses or registration found no one to help Friday at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The doors to the state health agency were locked too.
Even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s emergency services office was dark.
Hundreds of state offices closed because there was nobody to run them: More than 200,000 state employees had to take the day off Friday without pay to help ease California’s budget crisis.
Schwarzenegger ordered employees to take two unpaid days off a month, hoping to save the state $1.3 billion through June 2010, when the mass furloughs are expected to end.
Critical services such as state fire stations and centers that process unemployment insurance claims remained open, as well as state parks.
The days off, expected to be the first and third Fridays of each month, will trim the average state worker’s salary by 9.2 percent as Schwarzenegger and lawmakers try to solve a $42 billion budget shortfall.
“It feels like we’re being punished because we chose a career in state government,” said Shelia Byars, 47, a hearing officer at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Van Nuys.
At the state Department of Transportation, a handful of engineers were working Friday, although they were not being paid.
Mark Sheahan, a transportation surveyor in the department’s Marysville office, said the road and infrastructure projects he works on would be set back as employees take off 16 hours a month.
“We lay asphalt and pour concrete and get people back to work,” Sheahan said. “Why would you ever want to stop those things when we have a budget crisis?”
