DES MOINES -- With state revenues sinking and further budget cuts looming, many in Iowa's citizen Legislature are finding they are forced to make decisions that affect their workplaces back home.

The General Assembly is filled with regular people with regular jobs -- farmers, teachers, corrections officials. And those ties are making budget decisions even more difficult for some lawmakers.

Rep. Jeff Kaufmann, R-Wilton, is hearing fears from co-workers at Muscatine Community College, where he is the chairman of the social sciences department. Every Friday he's back at work, fielding questions from students, maintenance workers and the college's president about the status of funding.

"Right now, we're getting close to April, so the community college people are worried about pink slips; they're worried if they are going to come back," Kaufmann said.

The severity of the budget problems are just starting to sink in with lawmakers, said Sen. Bill Dotzler, D-Waterloo. He compared last week's meeting of the state's Revenue Estimating Conference to a funeral.

The panel slashed this year's projected revenues by another $130 million, sending lawmakers back to the drawing board.

"People are just walking around numb," Dotzler said.

Gov. Chet Culver said Wednesday that until he and lawmakers agree on a budget, they won't know how many workers will be laid off.

"What we're trying to do is to try to limit the impact and to try to slow the number of jobs that are lost," Culver said. "We're going to do the best we can, but it's very complex."

Rep. Ray Zirkelbach, D-Monticello, is both a member of House-Senate justice systems budget subcommittee and a counselor at the Anamosa State Penitentiary.

He's heard concern from fellow state employees over budget cuts and job security.

"It's tough. ¦ We're dealing with people's lives, their jobs, their careers. It's hard to do, but constitutionally, we have to have a balanced budget," Zirkelbach.

Sen. Shawn Hamerlinck, R-Davenport, is an Iowa State University employee and program administrator for 4-H. But he said he doesn't want his decisions at the Statehouse to be about saving his job.

"It's got to be about what is best for the taxpayers on the budget side and the people who we offer programming to on the education side," Hamerlinck said.

Sen. Bob Dvorsky, D-Coralville, is a chairman of budget-writing Senate Appropriations Committee. But in his day job, he's as an executive officer for 6th Judicial District Department of Correctional Services.

He's seeing a lot of apprehension in the public sector. He said many things, including the level of layoffs, remain unknown right now.

"I don't think people understand the depth of this at this point," Dvorsky said.

Even those without public sector jobs are finding that budget cuts are directly affecting them.

No one knows that better than Sen. Swati Dandekar, D-Marion, who was drafted Wednesday to deliver the bad news to the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy that its state funding likely will be eliminated. Dandekar serves on the organization's board of directors.

Contact Charlotte Eby at (515) 422-9061 or chareby@aol.com.