More state government workers facing layoffs
2008, EVA RUSSO/TIMES-DISPATCH
State Police Col. W. Steven Flaherty told his staff the reductions would force the department to “delay and eliminate certain noncritical services.“
Job cuts included in the budget reductions that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine proposed last week don’t stop with the layoffs of 593 full-time workers.
About 200 temporary and hourly wage employees who work for the state also will lose their jobs, according to budget documents and administration officials.
They are office workers, data clerks, landscapers, bus drivers, janitors and teaching assistants who supplement the state’s full-time work force.
The wage-worker reductions, slated to save $2.3 million, do not include anticipated layoffs of temporary employees and wage workers in higher education. Kaine has handed over the budget ax to Virginia’s public colleges and universities to cut more than $100 million statewide.
Under the current budget plan, the Virginia State Police is the agency absorbing the brunt of part-time layoffs. It is slated to lose 104 part-time positions of non-sworn workers to save $1.2 million.
“I don’t recall a time in our history that has required layoffs or furloughs in order to meet our budgetary obligations,“ State Police Col. W. Steven Flaherty wrote in a memo to his staff outlining cuts to his budget, a copy of which was obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Flaherty wrote that the loss of 104 workers would force the department to “delay and eliminate certain noncritical services.“
In Staunton, the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind will lay off bus drivers, interpreters, teaching assistants, security officers and housekeeping staff members to save about $475,000.
Also in Staunton, the Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia will make $150,000 in cuts that include reductions of hourly wage employees who help maintain the grounds and staff special events.
In Richmond, the Library of Virginia will absorb temporary and full-time worker cuts included in $123,000 in savings.
Other departments losing hourly wage employees include the Department of Conservation and Recreation, the Department of Emergency Management, and the Department of Forestry.
The state has about 10,500 temporary and hourly wage employees, in addition to about 5,800 part-time teaching faculty positions at state colleges and universities.
Officials said a specific agency breakdown on the number of hourly wage workers expected to lose their jobs was not available immediately for all departments. The figures vary depending on the pay for each job eliminated and the amount of spending a department was required to cut.
Secretary of Finance Richard D. Brown said the “vast majority” of the cuts to temporary staff in state agencies were included in budget-reduction plans that the agencies submitted at the request of the governor.
“The governor’s starting points were their plans,“ said Brown, who this morning is to brief the Senate Finance Committee on the governor’s latest spending reductions.
Citing a steep drop in state revenue, Kaine this summer asked state agencies to submit plans with 5, 10, and 15 percent cuts. Last week, the governor announced a sweeping series of spending reductions to the fiscal 2010 budget to make up for an anticipated $1.35 billion shortfall in revenue.
Included among the cuts was the closure of three correctional facilities; deferral of a quarterly payment to the Virginia Retirement System; and the elimination of 929 full-time jobs on the state payroll—including 593 layoffs of state workers. The personnel cuts were expected to save about $170 million.
Contact Jim Nolan at (804) 649-6061 or
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Reader Reactions
I totally agree that more criminals should find the death chamber rather than finding themselves housed for life. If this was the case, perhaps we’d see a decrease in crime.
The Virginia Department of Corrections will break the state, look what it has grown from in 30 years !!! It’s not the employees and leadership’s fault but something has to be done about it. It’s a fact, many more need to find death row and many lessor offenders need not be in there.
Its time to do a study of merging smaller agencies in State Govt into a large umbrella vs layoffs. There are too many small state agencies with too many high brass. In other terms too many chiefs and not enough indians. Plus agencies within state govt that are a waste of tax payer dollars and are not effective within the operation of state services and are not needed that need to be abolished.
Right now, the average driver pays less than a penny per mile in taxes to travel roads that cost almost, on average, more than a million dollars per mile to build.
VDOT has had it’s workforce forcibly shrunk by the privatizationist government policies by almost 50 percent over the last ten years, resulting in huge increases in costs for maintenance and construction services.
And no, you can’t see the cost figures - you ain’t entitled to know what your government is doing.
But, consider this, if the policies were actually saving money, then why are the numbers not being shouted from the rooftops?
Why are the budgets being busted, and the money disappearing faster than water down the throat of a commode?
Why are the bridges falling down, the roads falling apart, and the systems shutting down?
Why is the grass two feet tall?
Why is McDonnell, and Deeds both touting do-nothing policies concerning transportation, and everyone ignoring the white elephant in the center of the room.
You know, if the gas tax were doubled, the average person would pay 2 cents a mile to drive on a system where it costs tens of millions to build a midrange bridge, billions of dollars to build a major crossing, and on average a million dollars per mile to build a simple stretch of road.
In many instances it costs several hundred thousand dollars to overlay (resurface)one mile of two lane road.
And that folks, takes a source of funding that is direct, reliable and consistent. in other words, “funding mechanisms that are creative, that are entrepreneurial” are do nothing gimmicks that will add to the misery, add to the complexity, and totally do nothing to address the problems that are growing as the normal aging process destroys the infrastructure just as it does the human body.
Jack,
Good article! Sad but very true and the trend will continue!
There will be more to come. We have grown government to the point we can’t afford it. To make up for lack of jobs government has been adding employees to mask the decline in good private sector jobs.
Incomes of young in 8-year nose dive
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
The incomes of the young and middle-aged — especially men — have fallen off a cliff since 2000, leaving many age groups poorer than they were even in the 1970s, a USA TODAY analysis of new Census data found.People 54 or younger are losing ground financially at an unprecedented rate in this recession, widening a gap between young and old that had been expanding for years.
While the young have lost ground, older people have grown more prosperous over the years and the decades. Older women have done best of all.
The dividing line between those getting richer or poorer: the year 1955. If you were born before that, you’re part of a generation enjoying a four-decade run of historic income growth. Every generation after that is now sinking economically.
Household income for people in their peak earning years — between ages 45 and 54 — plunged $7,700 to $64,349 from 2000 through 2008, after adjusting for inflation. People in their 20s and 30s suffered similar drops. Older people enjoyed all the gains.
The line between the haves and have-nots runs through the middle of the Baby Boom, the population explosion 1946-64.
“The second half of the Baby Boom may be in the worst shape of all,“ says demographer Cheryl Russell of New Strategist Publications, a research firm. “They’re loaded with expenses for housing, cars and kids, but they will never generate the income that their parents enjoyed.“
What caused the income gap:
• Waiting line for good jobs. Older people are working longer, crowding out young people from the best-paying jobs while boosting the incomes of older workers and seniors.
• Global competition. Low-income workers in other nations have pushed down wages in the USA. Newly hired workers — generally younger people — experience the wage decline first, says economist Dean Baker of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank.
• Golden age of retirement. Social Security and private pensions have elevated the incomes of retired people to record levels and reduced poverty among the elderly.
One bright sign: Women have boosted income by holding half the USA’s jobs, working longer hours and narrowing the gender pay gap from 2000, when women made 25% less than men, to 2008, when they made 23% less. Older, college-educated career women have had the biggest gains.
Terry Neese, founder of a human resources firm in Oklahoma City, says income shifts partly reflect changing gender roles and values.
As women bring in more income, men can work less or stay home with children, she says. Neese says her own daughter, who now runs the family firm, worked less and went to more kids’ soccer games. “My daughter says, ‘I’m not going to work like you worked,‘ “ says Neese, 60.
Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2009-09-17-young-people_N.htm?csp=15
Citizen,
The budget cuts are bogus. There are several truely effective ways to slice fat out of the budget, such as examining contracts that state agencies must make for “privatization”.
Northrup-Grummond for instance.
Does anyone doubt that this high profile contract is the norm, and not the exception?
Did anyone else notice that this area was untouched, and untouchable during the budget cuts?
Can’t mess with the folks paying off the politicians.
One interesting thing, unrelated.
The state has sovereign immunity from lawsuits, so I wonder…
When a home owner knows of hazardous conditions to his home, and doesn’t repair them, and someone is injured because of these hazards, he is liable for damages.
By the same token, If the state is made aware of hazardous conditions, and the people in charge don’t just ignore the problem, but wilfully refuse to fix the problem, wouldn’t a court deem that criminal behavior?
The legislature, and Governors have been aware for 3 decades that many roads and bridges are substandard, and in some cases actual death traps, but in the name of no tax increases, despite that being the current legal method of financing state projects, these people have refused to address the problems, and hundreds, if not thousands die each year from it, deaths that could be prevennted.
A recent study showed that more than a third of all accidents on the highway are caused by the conditions or design of the highway itself, not mechanical or driver error.
Can we charge every politician, including governor Kaine, Mr. McDonnell and Mr. Deeds with criminal malfeasance?
Is there possibly a way to charge the rest of these crooks?
I think the last courtcase I read about on State sovernity stated that willful misconduct was not covered, and our politicians have had the knowledge about the problems and have WILLFULLY refused to address them.
pjohn…..your view is right on point. Tonight, during a public forum on the closure of Brunswick Correctional Center, the exact point that you make was a topic of discussion and a DOC Official all but confirmed that this may become or is a practice of DOC.
This is to Captjay20010,
RIGHT ON!!!
My husband is a highly decorated, Retired after 39 years of service to the State Police. For you State Police officers out there reading, He started H.E.A.T. and trained many of you I can’t say his name but you know who he is. Believe me when I say, He feels your pain everyday.
GOD SPEED VA. State police officers you may not feel it, but the public is behind you ALL THE WAY.
I’m undercover as well.
If the state police would do more to get rid of the illegal aliens here in Virginia they would not need to lay off.
http://www.bvbl.net/index.php/2009/06/12/illegal-aliens-cost-virginia-taxpayers-17-billion-annually
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