NEW YORK (Reuters) – The New York State court system will lay-off as many as 500 workers in the coming weeks, according to a union memo released on Friday, as the state works to close a $10 billion budget gap.

New York state lawmakers recently passed a spending plan for fiscal year 2012 that includes across-the-board cuts to state agencies.

New York is not alone. Many cash-strapped states across the United States have been firing workers, delaying big building projects and raising taxes after the 2008 recession and financial crisis left state coffers severely depleted.

David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the court system, confirmed that layoffs are in the works but said it's too early to tell how many jobs -- or which ones -- will be lost.

"In the next two or three weeks we'll have a firm understanding of numbers," Bookstaver said.

New York is not alone in slashing expenses in its court system. Connecticut's top judge on Friday testified at a budget hearing that a proposed 10 percent cut to that state's court system could result in layoffs and courthouse closings.

Cuomo, a Democrat, has threatened 9,800 layoffs if public employee unions do not concede $450 million in savings from wages and benefits.

The New York state memo, prepared by the Civil Service Employees Association, says that no decisions have been made regarding what positions would be eliminated.

The court system currently has 15,350 employees, not including judges.

The cuts follow tense budget talks. After Governor Andrew Cuomo publicly criticized the court administration for proposing to hold spending flat, the court system agreed to a $100 million cut, but lost an additional $70 million in the final week of budget talks.

A Cuomo spokesman was not immediately available to comment on the CSEA memo, which says that some layoff notices could be sent out as early as next week, and would be effective May 4.

The freshman governor this week announced an accord with a relatively small law enforcement union, including a three-year wage freeze and increased health care contributions. But the state's two largest unions said that they rejected those proposals.

In a video message last month, State Court of Appeals Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman said that the budget cuts would have "an unprecedented impact on the court system."

"The impact of our reduced budget will hurt our ability to serve all New Yorkers, in particular those who come to our courts seeking justice," Lippman said.

The judge went on to warn of a "significant number of layoffs across a broad range of operations," as well as cuts to legal aid, town and village courts and mediation.

(Editing by Chris Sanders)

DENVER (Reuters) – A Colorado woman who admitted her 13 month-old son drowned in the bathtub while she played on Facebook was sentenced on Friday to 10 years in prison, prosecutors said.

A judge also ordered Shannon Johnson, 34, to serve five years of mandatory parole upon her release from prison, Jennifer Finch, spokeswoman for the Weld County District Attorney's Office, said in a written statement.

Johnson pleaded guilty in March to felony child abuse resulting in the death of her son, Joseph.

She called 911 from her home in Fort Lupton, Colorado, last September when she found the toddler slumped over in the bathwater making "gurgling" sounds, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

Under questioning by investigators, Johnson admitted she put her son in the bathtub and went into another room to play Facebook game "Cafe World," police said. The boy was alone for 10 minutes, she told them.

Joseph was airlifted to a Denver hospital, where medical personnel could not revive him.

Johnson told police she often left her son unattended in the bath, because as an "independent" child he liked to be left alone, and that she did not want him to be "a mama's boy."

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis)

LUBBOCK, Tex (Reuters) – A firefighter was killed on Friday west of Fort Worth as wildfires erupted across a wide swath of Texas, fanned by 60 mile per hour winds and feeding on brittle brush after the driest March in state history.

Gregory Simmons, 51, a firefighter in the community of Eastland, was killed fighting a fast moving brush fire near the town of Gorman, according to Eastland Mayor Mark Pipkin.

"To say we are shocked and saddened by this tragedy is a huge understatement," Pipkin said in a written statement.

Simmons was a 20 year veteran, including 11 years with the Eastland Fire Department, according to a city statement.

Simmons was the first death reported in fires that have scorched more than one million acres since February, according to the Texas Forest Service. A firefighter injured April 10 fighting a blaze in the Panhandle remained in critical condition in Lubbock on Friday.

At least nine separate fires were burning over 200,000 acres on Friday, and most of the fires were just zero to twenty percent contained by late in the day, according to April Saginor of the Texas Forest Service.

Strong winds have pushed fires sparked by metal work, train cars and lightning strikes across acres of thick grassland and tough terrain. Single-digit humidity and plentiful fuel have made every spark dangerous. Grasses and other plants that thrived in heavy rains last year dried to kindling over the winter.

"We're setting records for dryness and humidities and wind events that we've not seen here before," said Texas Forest Service spokesman Marq Webb.

Until Friday, the fires had been in rural areas and mostly away from heavily populated cities.

But emergency officials issued a mandatory evacuation for the northern suburbs of San Angelo in West Texas on Friday as wind gusts pushed wildfires sparked by lightning toward the city.

Flames were within a mile of a bedroom community of Grape Creek and roughly five miles from the outskirts of San Angelo, a city of more than 90,000, at the time of the evacuation.

Winds were gusting out of the north at up to 26 miles per hour, pushing the flames toward San Angelo, National Weather Service meteorologist Joel Dunn said.

All but a few holdouts in the small town of Rotan, population 1,100, were evacuated under clouds of thick smoke and ash for five hours Thursday evening as flames rushed in from the west.

The outbreak surprised crews who thought they had contained the fire far outside town, state fire information officer Les McNeely said.

Flames instead raced east at up to four miles an hour, he said. Empty cropland just outside the town gave firefighters the break they needed to protect it, he said.

"That's what happens out here when the weather and so forth, especially the winds, start pushing it when the fuel is this dry," McNeely said.

At least 50,000 acres burned in the fire, though high winds grounded observation helicopters and made the fire difficult to track through the rugged ranchland, he said.

"I could hardly drive this morning, not only from smoke, but from blowing dust," McNeely said.

State officials were cautioning residents across Texas to prepare for wildfires, including clearing dried brush away from homes and roofs. Texas Railroad commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones urged residents to move propane cylinders, a common fuel in rural Texas, away from homes and to clear brush around them.

(Additional reporting by Jim Forsyth; Editing by Greg McCune)