More cuts ahead
After nine hours of negotiations ended Monday without the state employees union and the Douglas administration reaching a settlement, Gov. James Douglas will soon have the opportunity to do what he seems to have wanted to do all along — cut up to 300 positions from the state payroll without needing the Legislature’s approval.
The Vermont State Employees Association presented an offer at Monday’s meeting to forestall layoffs. It called for workers to take four furlough days and three unpaid holidays and use medical plan surpluses to help close a $7.4 million shortfall in the budget for the current fiscal year. It also proposed concessions that would achieve more than $10 million in savings over the next two fiscal years, including eliminating its dental plan, wellness program and tuition reimbursements.
But the union balked at Douglas’ offer of no more layoffs this fiscal year in exchange for further staffing cuts in the 2011 and 2012 fiscal years, when the state may face up to $200 million in budget deficits.
The administration claims that the proposals offered by the union were not enough to close the 2011 and 2012 budget gaps, and the administration could not offer the guarantee sought by the union that there would be no layoffs in the next two fiscal years. The union maintains that any major cuts in the future should be negotiated in next year’s labor contract, something Douglas opposes.
All this leads to questions.
Was the Douglas administration negotiating in good faith when it insisted on making state payroll cuts two years into the future, knowing that the VSEA would reject it? By tying the negotiations to savings on next year’s budget — knowing that the VSEA would turn it down — is the administration using these negotiations as the pretext for summarily cutting up to 300 positions from state government?
As we’ve seen over the past few months, the goal of the administration has not been to save money. It has been to reduce head count and permanently shrink the size of state government, while at the same time preserving jobs for political appointees.
Douglas has said the number of state workers — and their pay — has grown significantly over his six years as governor. According to the VSEA, that statement does not take into account that the number of classified workers — largely in the union — has grown less rapidly than the exempt or appointed workers.
Between 2003 and 2008, members of the VSEA bargaining units grew by 5.9 percent, while exempt employees grew by 11.1 percent, and that was before this year’s layoffs, position reductions and retirements.
Prior to this week, the Legislature and the Douglas administration have cut 620 positions from the state payroll through a mix of layoffs, early retirements and not filling vacancies. Unfortunately, the jobs have been cut based on reaching a monetary target, rather than on ways to make government work more efficiently.
A couple of months ago, the VSEA said that the first round of layoffs translated into annual savings to the state of about $6 million. However, of that amount, nearly half — $2.4 million — was money from the federal government. The administration countered that most of the federal funds funding those positions will be redirected to support programs and services. If that is the case, we’ve yet to see a full accounting of whether this claim by Douglas’ staffers is true.
There has also been little collaboration between the union and the administration on coming up with ways to save money without cutting essential services. By all appearances, the focus of the administration has been purely on reducing the number of people on the state payroll, with no regard for delivery of services.
That’s no way to run a state.
Other articles and editorials about the threatened job cuts:
www.vermontbiz.com/news/september/vermont-union-state-reach-impasse-200-job-cuts-likely