Workers Protest States’ Financial Chaos : Government: Crises are especially serious in Connecticut and Maine, where governors cut services. Pennsylvania employees go unpaid.

Angry state workers rallied Friday outside the capitols of Pennsylvania and Maine, demanding action from political leaders who have plunged state governments into chaos by failing to adopt budgets on time.

Budget crises have been especially serious in Connecticut and Maine, whose governors have shut down non-essential state services, and in Pennsylvania, whose state workers were not paid on payday Friday.

“We want a budget, and we want our paychecks,” said Fred Davis, a public employees’ union leader in Pennsylvania, during a rally outside the Capitol in Harrisburg.

More than 100 protesters stood on the rotunda staircase holding union banners, chanting “Paycheck! Paycheck!” and waving signs with such messages as “Don’t pass the buck--Pass the budget.”

More than 10,000 Pennsylvania state workers did not get their paychecks Friday because lawmakers failed to meet the June 30 deadline for passing a budget for the fiscal year. Legislators planned no further negotiations until Sunday.

In Augusta, Me., an estimated 600 state workers and their supporters rallied on the Statehouse steps to urge an end to the government shutdown.

The demonstrators sang, chanted and carried signs with such messages as: “End the lockout,” “We want a budget” and “Free the Maine 10,000.”

“It’s the first time in the 171-year history of Maine that any governor has had the heartless audacity to shut down the state in order to pander to the interests of the rich and powerful,” union leader John J. Sweeney said.

The Legislature continued efforts to balance the state’s $3.2-billion, two-year budget, but with little apparent progress.

The partial government shutdown ordered by Republican Gov. John R. McKernan Jr. has forced the closure of state parks and liquor stores and delayed the mailing of checks for unemployment compensation.

The closure of state liquor stores has been a boon for private liquor sellers but is beginning to have another effect: Restaurants, which are required by law to buy all their liquor from state stores, are beginning to deplete their supplies.

“I’ve got some angry restaurant owners out there,” said Carl Sanford, executive vice president of the Maine Restaurant Assn.

In Connecticut, just about everybody is angry at maverick Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., who insists that to overcome a $2.9-billion deficit and revive the economy, the state must do the unthinkable: overhaul its tax system and impose a state income tax.

Weicker, an independent, is locked in a high-stakes showdown with the state’s General Assembly. The deadlock has paralyzed state government, idling 20,000 state workers since Monday, the start of the new fiscal year.

One state worker wore a T-shirt that read: “Shut Weicker Down.” At a state park where campers were ordered out, signs sprouted urging “Impeach Weicker.”

The word on Weicker during his days in Washington was that he excelled at the grand gesture--taking on President Richard M. Nixon during Watergate and getting arrested outside the South African Embassy to protest apartheid.

“He’s temperamentally unfit to be governor,” said one of Weicker’s harshest critics, state Rep. Richard Foley, head of the state Republican Party. “He ought to remember he was elected governor, not Pope.”

A budget meeting aimed at resolving the impasse was to be resumed Friday night at the governor’s mansion. Eight hours of talks between Weicker and legislative leaders on the Fourth of July yielded little progress.