Governor begins process of reducing politically-appointed employees

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August 21, 2010

By RONNIE ELLIS CNHI The Glasgow Daily Times Sat Aug 21, 2010, 06:45 PM CDT

FRANKFORT — Gov. Steve Beshear began the process Friday of reducing the number of non-merit – or politically appointed – state employees with a targeted budget savings of $5 million.

The enacted budget for the next two years requires Beshear to find $131 million in savings on top of the budget cuts enacted by the legislature. The non-merit reductions are targeted to produce $5 million of that.

During the regular General Assembly, lawmakers complained about the number of politically appointed executive branch employees and expressed frustration they couldn’t get reliable numbers of such employees. Eventually, lawmakers passed a budget that called for $10 million in non-merit reductions – but Beshear vetoed the language that tied him to that specific figure.

Beshear’s spokeswoman, Kerri Richardson, said the process of reducing the number of such employees began Friday and some employees learned their positions have been eliminated.

“But this is a rolling process,” Richardson said. “It will be on-going. Some employees are being informed today, others will find out next week. And there’ll be more down the road.”

She said the $5 million will be spread proportionally across all agencies, cabinets and constitutional officers — including the governor’s office. Richardson said the governor cannot direct constitutional officers to lay off employees — only to produce a specified amount of savings.

The reductions are on top of 3.5 percent reductions enacted in the budget as well as previous reductions in prior budgets. Richardson said the plan to achieve the $131 million uses $67 million in debt re-structuring; $30 million from agency budget reductions; $24 million from furloughs of state merit employees; and $5 million each from the sale of state assets and the non-merit reductions.

Richardson said the reductions include attrition and retirements as well as layoffs.

Both Jennifer Brislin, spokeswoman for the Justice Cabinet, and Chuck Wolfe, spokesman for the Transportation Cabinet, referred reporters’ questions to Richardson. Both said they couldn’t provide the number of staff reductions that will be necessary in their cabinets.

“It was the legislative intent that the prosecutors and constitutional officers be held harmless in these cutbacks; in fact, we found their budgets to be fairly lean,” said House Speaker Greg Stumbo Friday when he learned of Beshear’s action. “The key to this whole process is to find non-essential political appointees. We set a target, and if the governor has hit half of that six weeks into the fiscal year, he’s well on his way to meeting the goal we had set.”

Shelley Johnson, spokeswoman for Attorney General Jack Conway, said it doesn’t appear the latest reduction will affect prosecutors’ budgets or staff for now.

“At this point, it doesn’t look like prosecutors will be impacted,” she said. “The governor has not targeted them for reductions so far.”

Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cnhifrankfort.

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