Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue announced this week that state school systems were to receive a 3 percent cut in their budget and mandated staff furloughs.

We are fortunate that we live in a state where quick and decisive action is taken when there is a crisis like our current financial situation.

Although we are not particularly pleased the Go Fishing pet-project of the governor remained fully funded, we could have elected officials who play games and who cause their state to go into a bankruptcy like the elected officials of California have done.

At the same time, we feel the pain of this state’s teachers, who will lose some of their pay, as we felt the pain for our own county workers who have lost hours and in some cases, their jobs.

In these economic times, the small businesses and large companies that are providing the major portion of the taxes that support schools and employing much of the labor force are suffering through even worse pains.

The governor did the fair and prudent thing in his mandates — that’s why we are disappointed by the comments of Verdaillia Turner, president of the Georgia Federation of Teachers, who questioned the government’s wisdom on these cuts. She said that instead of cutting teachers the governor should go after the tax breaks that Georgia gives to corporations that employ thousands of workers in Georgia.

We think Ms. Turner must have her head buried deeply in Georgia’s red clay. She is a classic example of a person who would bite the hand of the one who feeds her.