Santa Clara County is eliminating 273 positions to shore up a
projected $230 million budget deficit during fiscal year 2008-09,
the seventh consecutive year in the red for the county coffers.
SAN JOSE
Santa Clara County is eliminating 273 positions to shore up a projected $230 million budget deficit during fiscal year 2008-09, the seventh consecutive year in the red for the county coffers.
But all of the affected workers will be absorbed in other, lesser-paying or vacant jobs, said deputy county executive Luke Leung, who added that the positions are being eliminated in a cost-cutting move at the direction of the board of supervisors.
“What we’re doing is we’re delivering what the board has acted on, which is to cut 273 positions,” Leung said. “We’re trying our darndest to find a job in the county for them, lesser jobs or jobs that they’ve never had before that they can do or learn to do. None will actually be leaving the county.”
Leung said he didn’t know how much money the county would be saving by eliminating the positions, which make up less than 1 percent of the county’s 15,300 employees. It’s scheduled to take affect Jan. 28, and affected employees were notified with written notices on Dec. 12, he said.
The names and titles of the 273 employees are not being released because they are confidential personnel information, Leung said. The “reduction in scale,” as he terms the cuts, were approved by the board in July. They proportionally include higher-paid, mid-level managers as well as lower-paid employees, Leung said.
“We have to tighten our belts, because our expenses are bigger than our revenues,” said Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage, whose district includes the South County. “We’ll have to get more proficient at what we do.”
The supervisors used a combination of program and service reductions, issuance of pension obligation bonds, as well as reserve funds to close a $227 million deficit that in the current fiscal year, which ends June 31, 2008, Leung said.
The savings from the eliminated positions will be realized in the bottom line for the 2009 fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2008, concurrently with the state government’s fiscal year. Supervisors implemented the array of programs similar to last year to cut into it, and the projected deficit was shrunk from $230 million to about $150 million, Leung said. Shrinking the workforce was a method to further close the gap, he added.
Although nine positions are to be slashed in the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, the four attorneys and five investigators will not be laid off, said District Attorney Dolores Carr. With five attorneys retiring at the end of January, the office will actually have vacancies which will be filled, she said.
Elsewhere, work load will be spread out among a reduced staff. For example, instead of a full-time attorney and investigator in the Cold Case Unit, there will now only be an investigator and Carr plans to “spread the cases to other attorneys to work on” as time permits, she said.
The reduction does mean that the DA’s office is eliminating the entire community prosecutor program, which was staffed by a single attorney; also cut will be a position assigned to the Innocence Project and at the Lifer Hearings Unit, Carr said.
“After all is said and done, we will not have any layoffs because of retirements,” she said.
Two of the positions being eliminated are the county crime lab’s “cold case” investigators, which Gage said were “the right place to cut.” In lean financial times, he added, the county should “focus on the current cases.”
Brian O’Neill, a chapter chair of SEIU Local 521, said 35 affected union members will be transferred out of the departments where the supervisors decided to cut positions. The union represents thousands of clerical, blue collar, technical and other county employees who are in non-supervisory roles, O’Neill said.
The union’s layoff commitee member also said the position eliminations don’t violate any contracts.
“The county is very fluid,” O’Neill said. “So, that’s why in the long run we’ve been able to protect jobs. It means everybody will have benefits, a salary and a job.”
No jobs will be impacted at the South County Clinic, said Joy Alexiou, a spokeswoman for the Public Health Department.
