In 2008, there were 11,063 filled positions according to the State’s Department of Administrative services. In a recent press release, the Governor indicated that executive agencies should be prepared to make layoffs, the total number of which was estimated to be 750. This represents approximately 7% of the 11,063 filled positions in 2008. How those layoffs would occur, however, wasn’t made clear in the press release, and the implications of these layoffs cannot be known without significantly more information on the details of those potential layoffs.
If the layoffs were made proportionate to existing positions authorized by the state budget, then the figure below illustrates how many people each agency would have to lay off relative to their 2008 filled positions.
However, reaching the goal of saving $25 million in general fund personnel savings as required by the budget will be more complicated than that. First, not all positions are funded in the same way. Positions in the Department of transportation, for example, are funded largely by federal funds, which means they don’t count much towards meeting the goal of $25 million in general fund personnel cost savings. In other words, a disproportionate share of funds need to come from other areas of state government, like the Department of Health and Human Services. Even then the Governor will have to make a decision regarding which positions to maintain and prioritize. Institutions in state government, including the Glencliff Home for the Elderly, the state’s mental health hospital, the state prison, and the Veterans home, have direct service requirements that are difficult to re-engineer. If the past is any indication, direct service workers – however, defined – would be treated differently in this layoff process than, say, middle managers, or executive level decision makers in the executive agencies. The risk with laying off middle managers or exectuive level decision makers, of course, is that they are the ones that have been asked to manage significant change efforts necessary to meet other requirements laid out in the budget that was passed in June. While it’s clear that personnel changes are coming down the road (either in the form of furloughs or layoffs) the potential implications of layoffs for state service are still far from clear.
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