Gwinnett County government has made “significant cutbacks in staffing.”
—Charlotte Nash, commission chair, on July 15th, 2014
Gwinnett County government is expected to collect $20 million more in general fund property taxes this year as a result of rebounding home values.
County commissioners could give the money back to homeowners by rolling back the tax rate an equivalent amount. But they’ve decided it’s more prudent to leave the millage rate unchanged and put the extra money into projects that were put off during the worst of the Great Recession, such as a new roof for the main government complex.
They point out that even with the $20 million, the county will be collecting $40 million less than it did in 2009, when property tax collections were at their peak.
In recent discussions of the millage rate, Commission Chairman Charlotte Nash said county government has made “significant cutbacks in staffing.”
A PolitiFact Georgia reader asked if Nash’s statement could be truth-tested. We were glad to oblige.
Joe Sorenson, communications director for Gwinnett County government, provided us data and documents back to 2008.
Gwinnett County government imposed a hiring freeze in 2008, eliminating 179 positions a year later. The Planning and Development Department took the hardest hit. Rezoning requests essentially had evaporated and, with them, the need for 84 of the department’s 154 jobs.
Another 202 workers accepted retirement incentives to leave. The police and fire departments left 25 positions vacant, Sorenson said.
The county’s tax rate was increased in 2009. Some of the extra revenue was used in 2010 to increase staffing, primarily in public safety.
In 2011, the hiring freeze of 2008 was changed to a 90-day freeze on vacant positions. That policy remains in effect today and, by the county’s projections, is saving $8.9 million a year.
This year, the county added one new position, for an authorized workforce of 4,826. That’s 67 fewer workers than the 4,893 the county had in 2008, when the government was serving 90,000 fewer residents.
But can a 1.4 percent reduction in staff be called significant?
Nash said her comments related to the number of full-time county employees per 1,000 residents, which she considers a more accurate measure of staffing levels.
“There is certainly validity to the general idea that service demands go up as the population increases,” Nash said.
From 2008 to 2013, the number of authorized full-time county employees per 1,000 residents dropped from 6.27 to 5.64, a 10-percent reduction, she said.
“The significance of the 10 percent reduction is even greater when I look at the allocation of authorized positions across the organization,” Nash said. “Authorized positions for Public Safety, Sheriff and the Judiciary grew by 124 positions from 2008 to 2013 while authorized positions for the rest of the county departments and offices shrank by 192 positions.”
Officials at the Georgia Labor Department and the National Association of Counties provided data about what was happening in other governments across Georgia and the country.
The Labor Department data shows that in Georgia from 2008 to 2013:
— the number of fulltime and part-time federal workers increased 2 percent.
— the number of fulltime and part-time state workers dropped 5.2 percent.
— the number of fulltime and part-time local government workers dropped 5 percent.
Across the nation, counties cut 91,000, or 2.7 percent of their full-time works, going from 3.345 million workers in 2007 to 3.254 million workers in 2012, NACo data shows.
In metro Atlanta, we also reached out to officials in DeKalb, Cobb and Fulton counties. They provided data showing: DeKalb’s full-time workers fell 14.5 percent, from 7,309 in 2008 to 6,251 in 2014; Cobb County is down from 4,409 employees in 2008 to 4,213, or 4.4 percent, currently; and full-time employees in Fulton County has dropped about 18.3 percent, from about 6,327 in 2008 to 5,168 in 2014.
Steve Anthony, a political science lecturer at Georgia State University who focuses on Georgia government policies and practices, said the staff reductions in Gwinnett cannot be called significant.
Katherine Willoughby, a professor in the Department of Public Management and Policy at Georgia State’s Andrew young School of Policy Studies, said, however, that even a small cut in staff can be tough.
So where does that leave us?
Gwinnett County does have 67 fewer employees and 90,000 more residents now than it did in 2008.
But it’s probably a stretch to say the cutback in employees is “significant” given the downsizing that’s occurred across the public and private sectors.
We rate Nash’s statement as Half True.
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