April 29, 2009
Phantom jobs reduce layoffs
Governor David Paterson's plan to eliminate 8,700 state government jobs--in the absence of union concessions--doesn't mean 8,700 state workers will hit the unemployment lines.
Some of the eliminated jobs exist only on paper. They are funded, but not filled. The state Department of Education, for example, which is targeted to eliminate 199 positions, has 84 such jobs.
Education Commissioner Richard Mills now projects 71 actual layoffs at the 3,200-employee department, according to the Times Union. "We're getting indications that the (staff reduction) Plan will be accepted," Mills said in an internal webcast to his Department last Friday, and obtained by the Times Union.
Deeper cuts will likely be avoided, Mills explained, because of attrition and "because we have positions that are funded but not filled." The state Division of Budget is reviewing staff reduction plans of other agencies.
Paterson says he will eliminate 8,700 jobs (all in the executive branch) if public employee unions refuse to renegotiate their contracts. Paterson wants them to forgo a 3 percent pay raise and agree to a five-day lag payroll.
Meanwhile, the latest state budget figures should make state employees anxious about their long-term futures. Nearly a month after the passage of the $132 billion budget, the Paterson administration has released its financial plan.
As E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center writes:
Due to a combination of falling revenues and added spending approved as part of the 2009-10 budget deal, the state's out-year budget gaps are more than twice as large as those the governor originally projected in his Executive Budget proposal. DOB projects growing gaps in the future: $2.2 billion in FY 2010-11; $8.8 billion in 2011-12; and $13.7 billion in 2012.
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