1,116 jobs in Atlanta lost to shortfall

To help patch this year’s $140 million budget hole, the city of Atlanta laid off 24 employees and wiped out many vacant positions in the very department responsible for keeping the city out of the red: Finance.

The layoffs in that embattled department hit senior accountants, a budget and policy manager, a treasurer, a financial forecaster and several other number crunchers, according to documents obtained under Georgia’s Open Records Act. Nearly half of those let go appeared to be clerical and office support staff such as administrative assistants.

Positions for accountants, a senior financial manager and a revenue auditor were among those eliminated in the department. With the elimination of 38 jobs, the agency lost nearly a quarter of the 170 authorized positions it had in fiscal year 2008.

“This is a mess,” said Gina Pagnotta, a Public Works Department employee and president of the Atlanta Professional Association of City Employees. “Who is left to fix the budget?”

In all, the city laid off 372 employees and eliminated 1,116 positions — some filled and some vacant — to address the deficit.

City officials said they laid off employees with an eye toward protecting public safety jobs and other critical city services. They also based the layoffs for classified employees on job performance and seniority.

“I have every confidence that the current staffing level allows us to do the ongoing level of work in the Department of Finance,” said Chief Operating Officer Greg Giornelli.

The City Council agreed to Mayor Shirley Franklin’s proposal to slash the Finance Department’s funding by $4.1 million, from $15.4 million in fiscal year 2008 to $11.3 million now. Howard Shook, chairman of the council’s finance committee, said the deficit forced tough choices.

“We had to slim down drastically,” Shook said. “And, absolutely, there could not be an argument made that the Finance Department is sacrosanct.”

Shook said former Chief Financial Officer Janice Davis said before she left over the summer to take another job that some parts of the Finance Department had more employees than necessary. Shook also expressed concern about turnover in Davis’ job.

Davis did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Ray Zies, who was named Atlanta’s interim chief financial officer after Davis quit, resigned in August to go work with Davis at the North Texas Tollway Authority. He declined to comment. Lee Hannah, former director of city grant services, was named interim CFO after Zies resigned. Hannah did not respond to requests for comment.

“One challenge we have now is looking for long-term, consistent, able leadership at the top and that is not at all supposed to be a slight to the current acting director, Lee Hannah,” Shook said. “Lee is something like CFO number 12 or 13 in 16 years. This problem goes back way before these budget problems.”

The city expects to name a candidate to fill Davis’ job “shortly,” Giornelli said.

The job cuts in the Finance Department followed a series of embarrassing errors city officials made leading up to the deficit. They admitted to a long-standing practice of “under budgeting” fuel, utility and legal costs. They pointed to sloppy bookkeeping and nearly $5 million in invoices that were more than 90 days past due. In January, Davis rated the city’s financial management practices an “F.” She later faulted high turnover in the city’s budget office.

The overall job cuts left the city with 4,772 employees. That amounts to 847 employees per 100,000 city residents, according to a city report. That report shows Atlanta has fewer employees per capita than St. Louis, Cleveland, Seattle and Kansas City; about the same as Miami; but more than Denver and Charlotte. The average number of employees per capita among those cities is 936, the report says.

Atlanta’s Public Works Department took the hardest hit, losing 120 employees through layoffs. In all, the department lost 225 positions, covering everything from bridge workers to sanitation employees to parking meter enforcement officials.

As a result of the job cuts, the city has reduced how often it inspects bridges and mows the grass in public rights of way, Public Works Commissioner Joe Basista said. The city also has cut its number of pothole repairs crews from three to two, Basista said.

And if there are more city layoffs or job cuts in the future?

“I would have to adjust service levels,” Basista said. “I do not have any reserve staffing at all.”

The Police Department lost 192 positions, 69 of which were for school traffic safety monitors that were transferred to the school system. Of the other positions, 17 were for police investigators.

“That is going to severely affect our abilities to really concentrate and really spend a lot of quality effort and time in solving some of the cases these investigators get,” said Sgt. Scott Kreher, president of the Atlanta police union. “The call volume and the report volume are getting so tremendous. There is so much pressure put on these guys on a weekly basis.”

Police Chief Richard Pennington declined to be interviewed for this article.