Handel's jobs massacre: Another interesting angle
Last week, I took Republican gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel to task for announcing an ill-conceived budget-balancing scheme. Simply put, she wants to make up for the state's consistent structural deficit by firing close to 8,000 state employees.
Today, the Banner-Herald takes their shot, and they've got a pretty interesting angle - some of those employees, anticipating a Handel administration, might decide to jump before they're pushed. And since Handel herself has yet to put out any details beyond "fire a bunch of hard-working people," we might be risking our storehouse of institutional knowledge.
Here's an interesting example:
[It's] easy to envision a circumstance in which, for instance, a higher-education administrator who occupies an obscure corner of his or her institution's organizational chart, but who nonetheless is adept at bringing in the private dollars or corporate grants that help fund this state's colleges and universities - and thus reduce the pressure on state coffers - might be jettisoned.
Since Handel hasn't shown any overwhelming desire to clarify exactly who she wants to axe, it's as good a scenario as any.
Here's the one part of the editorial that I will argue with:
Handel is right to challenge what has been the prevailing attitude among state officials with regard to the state's massive revenue shortfalls, which has been to implement across-the-board, percentage-based spending cuts that avoid the hard questions of which specific government services the state might very well do with less of, or do without.
To me, it's the same across-the-board cuts, just in a different outfit. Handel wants to fire ten percent of the state's workforce. Under Perdue, state agencies and departments were ordered to devise budgets for six, eight, and ten percent less in appropriations, as part of the across-the-board budget cuts the ABH references. I don't see a lot of difference between the two plans, except that under Handel, you don't get to try to find the savings elsewhere before resorting to ruining someone's livelihood.
Martin,I understand your
Submitted by Jim Thompson (not verified) on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 11:36am.Martin,I understand your position that Handel's 10 percent proposal can be seen as virtually the same as the across-the-board cuts being ordered now. However, given another aspect of Handel's proposal, a call to "identify and eliminate non-essential services and programs," my thought is that there will at least be some thought given to where those 10 percent of employees can be cut without disruption to government services. Of course, as the editorial also noted, that gets us back to the question of who's defining non-essential services.
It's like I don't even have to be here sometimes
Submitted by Martin Matheny on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 2:38pm.My response would be exactly what you said. Who defines "nonessential"? (c.f. Cuts, Austerity [Edumacation]). I've got about zero faith that the things that Republican leaders in Georgia find nonessential are, in fact, nonessential. My evidence is the hackneyed but true example of $1.6 billion cut from public schools, while that dadgum horse park is still on the books.I'm also obviouisly biased, but I've got to tell you that, given the somewhat precipitous and hasty way she announced that plan (not to mention the lack of detail), I'm just not buying that there is any detail. This was a political move, not a policy one. Although, if she gets elected, I'm sure she'll do her level best to make it policy, and we'll suffer.Philosophically, I still hold to what I said. We rightfully excoriated Sonny and his pals for across-the-board cuts. This is the same thing, just a different flavor. And if my team is smart, they'll start using the phrase "across the board layoffs" as often as possible.