MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – State government will shed 400 jobs in the next 19 months by not filling vacancies, in an effort to reduce personnel costs that a top official says would otherwise double between 2000 and 2011.
Administration Secretary Mike Smith says there will be no layoffs. Instead, the state will leave some jobs vacant as people leave or retire.
“We aren’t eliminating people. We’re not going to do any layoffs,” Smith said. “We’re taking advantage of a retirement bubble that’s coming our way.”
“This will allow us to spend more money on services and less on overhead costs,” he added. “And it allows us to update our business practices and systems, bringing them into the 21st century by thinking strategically here.”
Smith said the plan is to cut 150 jobs from state government by next June 30 and 250 more during the following year. The announcement drew an immediate rebuke from the union representing state workers.
, the Vermont State Employees’ Association.
“This announcement means that 400 decent paying jobs in Vermont will be lost, an action that seems contradictory coming from the governor on the “Jim Jobs” platform,” the union’s executive director, Annie Noonan, said. “These jobs provide a livable wage, health care and retirement,” she said.
In a memo sent Friday to state agency and department heads, Smith, Gov. James Douglas’ top budget aide, said the jobs to be reduced were “a very small portion of the approximately 8,400 positions currently filled in the state work force.”
He said the cuts, to be detailed next week, would not be uniform across state agencies, but would be targeted to agencies that could best absorb them. Smith said they would not affect agencies that operate round the clock, like the Vermont State Police, Corrections Department and Vermont State Hospital.
“Coupled with strategic planning so that workloads are not simply shifted to other employees and public service is not diminished, this small decrease in the number of positions is very doable,” Smith wrote.
AP-ES-11-02-07 1836EDT
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