They are the lucky ones – the municipal workers who still have jobs and readily acknowledge their good fortune.

But government downsizing takes a toll: reduced hours, increased workloads because of layoffs and early retirements, and reduced pay. The state's tentative agreement for solving its budget crisis adds more pressure.

In Folsom's Finance Department, they sit in quiet cubicles, hurrying to meet the deadlines of payroll processing. They work faster these days because unpaid furloughs have squeezed available work hours.

In Woodland, they hold forth in the public lobby of the Yolo County Department of Employment and Social Services, offering guidance to a stream of people desperate for help.

These workers, like their counterparts in Lincoln, Sacramento and elsewhere, are carrying out the work of formerly larger staffs. They are the faces of hard times in city and county government.

Increasingly, stress is the standard outcome.

How do they unwind from the intensity of their jobs?

"We go home and go to sleep," said Sharon Heckley, Folsom disbursements specialist. "I am in bed by 8 o'clock."

"We're totally exhausted," said Jackie Schrader, a city Finance Department accountant who spends half her time in payroll and half in accounting.

Residents may experience reduced services and shorter operating hours. But they typically don't see how layoffs and downsizing are putting the squeeze on those still working.

In many cases, the pace is hard, the jobs are more demanding, and the pay is less. For this group, the unspoken message is clear: Those who can't hack it may be on the next list to go.

Some employees are upset the chaos in budgeting has landed in workers' laps.

"It's ludicrous to take it all out on the employees when we're working harder to get the job done in less time and for less pay," said Brad Buyse, a Sacramento County Managers Association trustee.

He's irritated that the pay cuts affect only some of the county's employees. His own pay has been reduced by nearly 14 percent while furloughs have increased his responsibilities.

Buyse, campaign manager for the Sacramento County elections office, said his department was short-handed before the budget squeeze. Now there's "no wiggle room whatsoever."

"It's extremely busy," he said. "Yet we still have to do the same quality of work. After 24 years, I'm not going to let the quality of my work go down. I've never seen it this bad and this difficult. Morale among county employees is low."

In Woodland, three customer service representatives help some of the thousands who call or come to the Yolo County Department of Employment and Social Services each month.

On Aug. 1, there will be two customer service representatives. The office will close to the public at 4 p.m. daily, instead of 5.

"Friday afternoons are pretty tough," said Grant Bos, one of the customer service reps helping visitors. "It's the end of the week and you've gone through the gamut."

Bos said he sees single moms who are newly alone, elderly people losing their in-home services, and first-time visitors who "walk in and just look dazed."

"At 59 years old, I am really grateful that I have a job," Bos said.

But the work takes an emotional toll because he sees so many without jobs. "People come in here and they are really desperate. Men who come in here and have been working for over 30 years and they are jobless and they are completely overwhelmed," he said.

The department tracks about 25,000 calls and visits each month. But its staffing, once funded for 373 jobs, soon will drop to 296, said Diana Williams, chief deputy director for the department.

"We're losing a lot of expertise, historical knowledge, institutional knowledge," she said.

In the same Woodland lobby, Valerie Stapleton, an employment services specialist, is a liaison for employers, helping with recruitment and managing layoffs. She has plenty to do in that job. But because of county downsizing, she's co-conducting weekly workshops starting in August on interviewing skills and résumés.

"Now, with the cut in the (county) budget, I have another half-time job added to my full-time job," she said.

"My job every day is bittersweet," she said. "But I do it."

Often workers have been transferred from a post where they enjoyed greater seniority and pay, bumping another worker in a lesser-paying job.

Roger Trout is a 19-year El Dorado County employee who has been development services director for the last nine months. He said his department has been downsized by half.

Many of the affected workers were managers, senior building inspectors and operations managers – those with the highest salaries, he said.

Some had been promoted for the last 10, 15 or 25 years.

They had the option of taking voluntary demotions and bumping someone else with lesser seniority.

Then the person bumped from a job "has to decide whether to bump somebody else," Trout said.

So the last major layoff in November didn't fully play out until January.

"It's hard on everybody," Trout said. "We basically had a de facto reorganization of the department."

It's not over.

El Dorado County supervisors decided Tuesday to furlough 460 employees between four and 10 days for this fiscal year. The county's work force stands at 1,828. A year ago, it was 2,040.

Will there be more furloughs or layoffs in the county?

"It's unknown," county spokesman Mike Applegarth said. "But it's definitely within the realm of possibilities."

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