After the Legislature suggested cutting $3 million from an energy-efficiency fund, state officials acknowledged savings from the four-day workweek experiment probably won't save the $3 million originally predicted.
Kim Hood, executive director of the Department of Administrative Services, now says the estimated savings from Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s Working4Utah initiative is a longer-term target goal.
"It's like me saying I'll lose 30 pounds in a year, it's a goal," Hood told lawmakers Wednesday. "At this point, I think the $3 million should be considered a stretch. I think we need the full year of a pilot program to determine what the savings are going to be."
On Jan. 12, legislative staff suggested cutting $3 million from the revolving fund that pays for projects to make buildings more energy efficient, and repaying the fund with savings from the Working4Utah initiative. That fund has become less restrictive over time, but that money can only be used for energy-related projects approved by the Department of Energy.
"Energy efficiency is not a cut you want to make. It's an investment that brings money back to the state," said John Harrington, state buildings energy manager. He said the $3.65 million in the fund had the potential 10-year energy savings of $12.5 million.
Hood agreed the fund was essential.
"Our target goal of reducing energy use by 20 percent may happen in the first year, or second or third year," said Hood, adding that Huntsman's goal is 20 percent of energy use cutting by 2015. "But our biggest challenge is getting those buildings efficient."
She said shuttering state government offices on Fridays hasn't generated as much cost savings as first predicted.
Several unforeseen issues, such as extreme temperatures, employee habits and workers coming in on the occasional Friday, made such a large amount of savings an impossibility this year, she said.
Michael Hansen, strategic planning manager for the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget, calls the lower savings "lessons learned."
"We made all these estimates and assumptions, and it looks like we were optimistic," he said. "We thought it would be easier, but there were all these weird little things."
He said he has a draft report prepared with actual figures showing how much the state has saved thus far, but it has not yet been approved for release.
The initiative was implemented with little to no input from state employees, lawmakers or residents, but Huntsman has worked to make the environment a top priority, even though many in the Legislature look at global warming as a farce.
The initiative moved 17,000 of the state's 24,000 employees from working five, eight-hour days to four, 10-hour days.
Hood said that while cost savings were not as high as predicted for this first year, the one-year pilot program has allowed the state to identify which buildings need to be more energy-efficient and how best to make them so.
