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Friday, February 10, 2012
City releases proposed budget; 189 planned layoffs
by Kathleen Haley, published on May 1, 2009 at 8:21 PM
Storyline: City Budget
The city of Sacramento is considering 189 layoffs as one part of its effort to address its $50 million deficit, according to its most recent count of potential layoffs.
The proposed budget figures, released Friday, mean possible layoffs for 189 people, explained city records manager and acting spokeswoman Wendy Klock-Johnson.
She noted that she hopes the public will read the budget documents and “be an active part of the process.”
Sacramento’s 2009/2010 budget states that the city will need to cut 387 positions.
Klock-Johnson explained that the 387 positions figure means that 189 people could be laid off. That’s because vacant positions make up the remaining 198 jobs.
The City Council will address the proposed budget at its May 19 meeting.
Klock-Johnson said the city has been proactive, and has been tightening its belt since September 2007. She noted that Sacramento’s economy has not yet turned for the better.
The budget document notes that the top two reasons the city is seeing reduced revenue are “the decline in both the real estate market and taxable sales.”
If the city’s labor unions refuse to make concessions, all 189 layoffs will take place, Klock-Johnson said.
Sacramento Area Firefighters Local 522 is currently in negotiations with the city.
The Sacramento Police Officers Association is the one union that has so far made concessions to the city. The police department will not experience layoffs because the union agreed to give up July salary increases for its members.
Several other unions have not made concessions at this time.
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Since the city council supports illegal aliens so rabidly, they could replace several hundred of unionized parks & maintenance employees with the guys standing out in front of Home Depot. Oh? whats that you say? its OK if illegal aliens take jobs away from average Americans just not city employees?
Government employees now make 40-150% more than the average private sector sucker. State employee spending has gone up nearly 80% in the last 10 years. There are government employees who make over 400K a year IN RETIREMENT! We the People of California owe over 300 BILLION in government retirement packages! Government workers in Sacramento are the new aristocracy. Up until now, they are the only ones in our country who have been unaffected by the economy...well it's about time...they do not deserve to be shielded from the economic downturn.
Also, where did you get all these statistics? It would be great if you could put the links to them in your comments so others could explore them in more depth. If the links are really long you can use a service like http://tinyurl.com or http://bit.ly to shrink the size of the web addresses to a reasonable size.
Powerful arguments are well documented.
I don't really have the time to write full articles right now Geoff....I was merely doing a quick response to the post. Everything I stated can be found on Google.
Comparing the highest level of retirement compensation among hundreds of thousands of state employees, including the highest-level executive professionals and scientific/medical specialists, isn't quite the same as the pay levels of most city staff. Lumping everyone who works for any public entity (aka "the gummit") into a single group is also a ridiculous comparison. Geoff, GadGalt of course is not just talking about city employees, but public employees in general. They're all "the gummit" to him, just as I'm sure he considers everyone of Hispanic/Latino descent to be an "illegal alien."
Government employees, especially in technical/scientific fields, typically make less than the private sector--the relative security of a public-sector job just barely makes up for it. In boom times, the public sector has a great deal of difficulty holding on to skilled people. In rough times, folks like GadGalt get jealous that state employees sometimes make more than they do selling Herbalife, and cry foul.
The idea that you could just run down to Home Depot and pay a day laborer to, say, do labor market analysis, manage a stock portfolio, perform medical procedures, interpret legislation into policy, or any of the thousands of complex tasks state or city employees do...well, it borders on the ridiculous. Galt's idea of a free-market solution to government spending is to pay the illegal immigrants he loathes with such a passion to perform office work and administer state agencies.
According to the link provided, *one* retired city or state employee makes over $400,000 a year, a retired city manager. So, more properly, your sentence should read "There is A government employee who makes over $400K a year in retirement."