Gov. Deal's budget leans on job cuts

By James Salzer

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

New Gov. Nathan Deal signaled a new phase in the battle to slim state government last week when he announced that 14,000 vacant jobs would be eliminated.

Lawmakers have cut $3 billion in spending over the past few years, but have done so with limited layoffs, by cutting some unfilled positions, and with furloughs.

Deal made it clear he plans to go even deeper to reorganize the state bureaucracy. The savings Deal hopes to reap next year from job spending cuts: about $204 million.

“Many politicians have long talked about reducing the size of government. My friends, we are doing it,” Deal told lawmakers during his first State of the State address.

The budget Deal proposes for the upcoming fiscal year would mean layoffs for about 200 of the state’s 97,000 workers. Budget officials say bigger savings could come from eliminating unfilled jobs. Some agencies have been collecting funding for unfilled jobs for years.

Combined, the savings could put a sizable dent in state’s more than $1 billion shortfall for the upcoming budget year.

Lawmakers say Deal’s plan also sends a message that every new job will have to be justified and vetted by budget writers. And Deal officials promise it is only the first step in a four-year effort to reorganize state government to hold down costs.

“The governor said throughout his campaign that we are going to deal with these austere times by reducing the size of government, not by taking more money out of the pockets of Georgia families,” his spokesman, Brian Robinson said. “This is his campaign promise embodied in policy.”

Some budget experts are skeptical that the job reductions can save as much money as Deal officials project.

While he supports Deal’s proposal, former longtime Senate Appropriations Chairman George Hooks of Americus said the savings estimates seem “a little high.”

Alan Essig, director of the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, an Atlanta think tank, said most of the unfilled positions were defunded years ago. Others may have become part of the so-called “continuation budget,” money agencies get every year to maintain operations.

“This is not a major policy change he’s implementing,” Essig said. “It’s cleaning up the books.”

Essig also warned that the move could have consequences that aren’t yet clear. If agencies were using the money to provide other services, he said, the newest cut “means something is not going to get done.”

While former Gov. Sonny Perdue and state lawmakers cut spending during the economic slowdown, they have laid off far fewer employees than the private sector. While exact numbers are hard to come by, estimates last year place the figure at about 800, or less than 1 percent of the state workforce.

Instead, the state furloughed employees — making them take time off without pay — and agencies cut some vacant positions.

Perdue said last year that the number of state jobs had fallen significantly. However, when the Office of Planning and Budget studied the jobs picture late last year, it found the state had more than 110,000 “authorized positions” — about 14,000 more than had been previously reported.

The number of jobs — filled or unfilled — rose for several agencies in the new count, but nowhere more than in the University System of Georgia, state government’s biggest employer.

A year ago, the governor’s budget report said the system had 35,747 jobs. The Office of Planning and Budget says the number should have been 50,590.

John Millsaps, a spokesman for the system, said the new figure includes part-timers, unfilled positions and jobs paid for out of things like federal grants and private foundations.

Deal’s budget authorizes the system to have 42,254 positions. Despite proposed budget cuts of more than $300 million over the next two budget cycles, Millsaps said the university system should be able to meet that goal without major layoffs.

Budget officials said 134 of the 200 or so proposed layoffs will come from the University System’s budget. Millsaps said none will come from university teaching positions.

Officials with other agencies told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that all of the positions Deal has proposed cutting from their departments are vacant positions and will not force layoffs.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Jack Hill, R-Reidsville, said in the past, agencies have used money saved when a worker leaves a post for other expenses.

“The (cooperative) extension service for years used vacant positions to fund their retirement system for agents until we caught them up (with retirement money).” Hill said. “The state patrol was funding some of its operations out of positions it was not filling.”

Hooks said agencies have, at times, kept positions open and collected funding for them.

“Say you have some guy making $40,000 a year, when he retires they wouldn’t fill it but they would keep that $40,000 in the budget,” said Hooks, a Democrat. That has become less common as agencies have had to find ways to cut spending. But many unfilled positions remain on the books, according to the planning and budget office.

Hooks said Deal’s proposal could help end that era.

“They padded the budget and what he’s doing is cutting it back to the bone, which he should,” Hooks said. “I think he’s on the right track.”

The next step may be consolidating or even eliminating state agencies entirely. Lawmakers have made a tentative start toward consolidating some duties, but the state still has more than one agency providing services such as job training.

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, the Senate’s president, has pushed the idea of consolidating or eliminating agencies in recent years, saying the state must decide which ones provide needed services and eliminate the rest.

Deal has provided few specifics about department reorganizations, but, his spokesman, Robinson, noted that the new governor’s administration is only a week old.

“What you are seeing is the governor’s vision of a smaller state government,” Robinson said. “Over the next four years, we will see a reorganization as we move resources to what he considers the core responsibilities of state government.”

Longtime Republican Rep. Earl Ehrhart of Powder Springs liked what he heard from the new governor.

“We are going to have to limit the government workforce like every business in this state has had to cut its workforce,” Ehrhart said.