Atlanta's Mayor Reed suggests cutting state workforce

By Ernie Suggs

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, in an address Wednesday to a special commission on Georgia tax reform, called on the state and Gov. Sonny Perdue to reduce the public workforce in order to redirect money toward education.

Reed asked Perdue’s Special Council on Tax Reform and Fairness for Georgians, to recommend reducing the size of state government by 10-15 percent over the next 36 months, and provide extensive job training for displaced workers.

“The new governor and leaders need to work through expediting that path,” Reed said, adding that in Atlanta, the city employee bases has gone from 9,654 in 2008 to 7,500 now, a reduction of about 25 percent. “And we haven’t gone far enough.”

Perdue said the state is running at bare-boned staff at levels Georgia has not seen in at least a decade. According to figures released by the governor, the state has approximately 75,255 employees, compared with 75,675 at the end of the 1999 fiscal year. As recently as 2008, there were more than 82,000 state employees.

The council was established by Perdue in June to conduct a study of the state's revenue structure and and recommendations for legislation.

Reed, who served as a state lawmaker for 11 years, had quite a few recommendations. He outlined a three-pronged approach to shore up the state’s revenues, spur job creation and wage growth, and improve education statewide.

Reed called for the state to set up a blue-ribbon panel do an annual cost and benefit analysis on all state tax exemptions. Reed said future tax exemptions should only be granted based on the ability to create jobs or provide specific job training.

Quoting a 2009 study by the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, Reed noted that Georgia has lost 7.6 percent of its jobs during this recession, one of the highest rates in the nation. Georgia’s falling revenues, combined with high levels of unemployment and wage stagnation, threaten the state’s ability to foster economic development initiatives, attract domestic and international business investment and draw top talent to its corporations, academic institutions and government agencies, Reed said.

“Georgia must make strategic investments now or risk becoming a second-tier state,” Reed said. “Georgia’s failure to invest in its people in an unwavering manner is not proving to be the right path. We must work in a bipartisan fashion to reverse this trend. The state needs to spend more dollars on job creation and training. Training is a direct link to creating a skilled workforce that attracts businesses that hire workers who earn higher wages.”

Economist Jeffrey Humphreys of the University of Georgia and the director of the Selig Center for Economic Growth, said Georgia’s problems stem from the fact that the state has been hit harder on the last two recessions  based on the industries that shaped our economy -- travel and information technology in 2001 and housing and the financial industry now.

Reed also called for lawmakers to use bipartisanship to invest in the quality of education from K-12 through the university system. Reed said education funding must become a “third rail” of the legislature that both parties support and protect to the point where they should cut other parts of the state government to find classroom instruction.

“Georgia owes its citizens a strategic road-map toward well-paying jobs,” Reed said. “Having a quality K-12 public education system and a world-class college and university system is absolutely critical to the long-term future of the state."