State may lay off 515

• By MARK BALLARD
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Sep 9, 2009 - Page: 1A

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

Twenty-three state agencies plan to lay off 515 workers because of budget problems, testimony and interviews showed Tuesday.

State government employed 98,248 people as of Sept. 3, including higher education and health-care workers.

Another 49 agencies opted to withhold the annual 4 percent merit pay increase for state employees as a strategy to avoid layoffs, according to a compilation of state government agency actions by the Department of State Civil Service.

Civil Service is preparing rules changes that director Shannon Templet said would amount to “work-force culture change.” The rules include changes in the way state employees are paid and how they are laid off, she told a subcommittee seeking ways to streamline government employment.

As of Sept. 3, at least 493 full time positions have been or soon will be eliminated by state government while 22 probationary employees already have lost their jobs, according to the Civil Service report.

There has been much talk of layoffs during the past nine months because state government expects to take in $1.3 billion less in taxes, royalties and other revenues for the fiscal year that began July 1. Agencies were required to cut their budgets.

A government office wanting to lay off its employees must first file a plan with Civil Service.

Kenyetta Sewell, deputy undersecretary, said Civil Service asked the agencies not to report vacant positions — only filled jobs — in their lay off plans. But she said the final count could differ slightly for a variety of reasons.

Budget shortfalls have led 20 other states to propose lay offs of government workers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Most of the Louisiana layoffs will occur in health care, according to the Civil Service report.

The closure of New Orleans Adolescent Hospital and the shifting of many of those positions to Southeast Louisiana Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Mandeville, caused the state Department of Health and Hospitals to eliminate 85 jobs.

Another 46 were or are about to be laid off from Greater New Orleans Supports and Services Center, a facility for the developmentally disabled, according to the report.

The LSU System will lay off 59 people from the Interim Public Hospital of Louisiana in New Orleans and 17 more at the Health Care Services Division, which oversees seven south Louisiana charity hospitals.