None of this is any fun.

When the economy is bad and public money dries up, government has to figure out a way to conform to a shrinking budget.

That’s Madison County’s situation. In their efforts to account for budget shortfalls, county officials have made missteps — such as increasing the county option income tax from 1.25 percent to 1.75 percent — but they’ve also taken some sound steps toward fiscal responsibility.

Monday evening, the County Council voted to impose unpaid furlough days for county employees to save enough money to keep the doors of the Madison County Government Center open and to avoid further layoffs.

Each employee will be required to take four days off without pay sometime during the next 36 business days. The immediate need is to cut $280,000 from the budget. Councilman Gary Gustin calculated that the county needs $70,000 a day to cover its payroll, leading to the stipulation that each employee take four unpaid days off.

Fake-cations. DOWOP (Days Off Without Pay). Whatever you want to call them, unpaid furlough days cut into people’s paychecks and create hardships for some who may be struggling to pay their bills anyway. But it’s a necessity in this time of financial crisis for local government officials to remember who they’re working for — the taxpayer, not the public employee — and to save money as needed.

The alternatives to furlough days — job cuts, wage cuts, etc. — aren’t very attractive either.

Anderson city government recently approved an employee package for next year that gives 14 holidays. The problem is that all of those are paid days off. Whether paid holidays are stipulated by union contracts or not, that’s poor management of public money.

Unpaid days off may cut into the services offered by the county, but at least taxpayers aren’t still paying employees for those days as if they were hard at work.