Few firings, this time

By David McGrath Schwartz

Friday, Jan. 30, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Gov. Jim Gibbons is planning to seek sweeping changes to the state’s process for laying off workers, to make it cheaper and give officials more control over which workers get the ax.

Although the governor’s budget proposes that only 370 workers lose their jobs — a fact the administration notes proudly — that decision wasn’t made merely to prevent unemployment lines from growing.

As Gibbons’ staff was sorting through its options to balance budget, the senior staff considered more layoffs, but there were two significant obstacles.

First, laying off workers is often expensive in the short term because state law requires taxpayers to contribute to departing employees’ retirement savings.

Second, the state layoff rules are inefficient and don’t allow managers to keep the best employees, according to Josh Hicks, Gibbons’ chief of staff. When layoffs are ordered, government workers with more seniority are protected from being laid off if there is a worker in the job with less seniority.

Gibbons staffers say they want to change those rules during the upcoming legislative session.

“There’s an inflexibility in the system that makes it difficult to quickly respond to budget crises,” Hicks said.

Gibbons wants to make the government run more like a business, Hicks said. Specifically, the governor wants to give department heads the authority to choose which workers are laid off.

“We want to allow managers to keep the most productive employees,” Hicks said. “That might not be someone who has been here for 30 years.”

That would be a major change to the state’s classified employee system, which strictly controls how employees are fired or let go in an effort to prevent cronies from getting jobs or enemies from being punished for political reasons.

The proposed changes will meet stiff opposition from Democrats and the state employees’ union. Gibbons has proposed that state workers take a 6 percent pay cut and pay more for their health and retirement benefits.

“It’s very clear since this governor took over, he has a vendetta against state employees,” said Dennis Mallory, chief of staff of the local chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents many classified state workers.

Allowing department heads, who serve at Gibbons’ pleasure, to pick and choose who gets laid off could lead to firings for reasons other than performance, Mallory said.

“Give him that opportunity, I’m sure he’d abuse that right. He’d have his administration abuse that right,” Mallory said. “I don’t think state employees should have their jobs depend on what side of the bed the governor wakes up on.”

Gibbons faces a federal civil lawsuit by a former budget employee, who alleges she was fired after she flagged expenses related to text messages Gibbons was sending from his state-owned cell phone. Gibbons this week was told he had to appear in court for a settlement conference in the case.

Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, said Gibbons’ proposal would go nowhere.

To make a change that dramatic would require a popular governor armed with detailed studies about the need, she said.

“It’s astounding that a governor, four days before a session begins, would propose a change of that magnitude without having done any of the political groundwork necessary,” she said. “His energy would be better spent on working with the Legislature on coming up with a viable budget plan.”

The civil service system was designed to prevent cronyism and partisan politics from entering the day-to-day operations of government. The fear is that politicians would, after an election, hand out government jobs to friends and political donors as favors.

But Hicks said that system was established long ago, and there’s not as much of a need for it today. “The classified system was created ... when the state was much smaller,” he said.

State government is too large for any administration to use it to punish enemies and help friends. Today, “no governor, no administration could go into the trenches of the department,” he said.