Georgia Lawmakers Try to Cut 2,189 Jobs, $415 Million as Employees Demonstrate

Georgia lawmakers, meeting in special session, faced an ocean of red ink and a seething crowd of angry state workers Tuesday as they wrestled with how to eliminate 2,189 employees and $415 million from their budget.

Gov. Zell Miller, a Democrat who remains adamant about not raising taxes, outlined the proposed cuts to the $7.9-billion budget in an unprecedented commercial television broadcast Sunday night. The state Legislature Monday began working on the plan, which is expected to pass as early as next week.

On Tuesday, hundreds of state employees demonstrated here, calling the proposed cuts unfair.

Among the protest signs were several reading, “Zell, no, we want you to go.”

Lagging tax revenues apparently got the state into its financial mess. Sales tax growth has been sluggish for about two years. And during that time, state hiring continued at a high rate. The situation was exacerbated when the recession hit last year.

Miller, in his televised address, said that the nationwide downturn has caused state tax revenues to drop sharply all across the country, adding that economists failed to gauge its “true depth and length.”

In the meantime, he said, many states “based their budgets on economic projections that were more optimistic than has proven to be the case.”

The governor, who was elected last year after serving 16 years as lieutenant governor, acknowledged that Georgia “used--and misused--the strong revenue growth of the 1980s to really bloat the state payroll.”

The number of state employees increased by 21,000 in the last five years, a rate of growth double the population increase.

While the cuts and layoffs seem inevitable, they are hard to swallow.

Many Georgians fear that much-needed programs and services will be lost.

On Tuesday, fear, anger and trepidation spilled into the streets as an estimated 500 of the 100,000 state employees rode here on buses from around the state to rally near the Capitol’s gold dome--under which lawmakers were considering the budget and personnel cuts.

Many workers expressed anger because those with the least seniority will be the first subject to layoffs, regardless of the quality of their performance. Some said black and female employees will suffer disproportionately because they were last hired.

One three-year-employee, Chris McAdams, a $13,000-a-year clerk with the Department of Industry and Trade, assailed the notion of being “bumped” out his job by those who rank higher.

“I’m at the bottom,” McAdams said. “If the supervisor wants my job to save his job, then I’ll just have to roll on out the door to the unemployment line.”

Still, even some state workers admit that the bureaucracy has become too fat to feed and that there is much room to cut.

An employee in the corrections department, where 700 of 12,000 jobs are proposed for elimination, said: “There are 1,200 (who) could go and wouldn’t be missed. They just sit around and do nothing all day.”

As in other states that have faced fiscal crises, Georgia workers fear the uncertainty of whether they, or their colleagues, will be fired and whether departments will be eliminated or reorganized.

From her office in the state Education Department, Joey Baughman, director of media development, said: “Not knowing is the most difficult thing about it. Everybody is feeling the tension. Nobody is without anxiety.”

The special session, expected to run through August, also will be used to draw new congressional districts.

The session’s end will not mean the end of budget cuts, said House Speaker Tom Murphy, longtime veteran of budget wars.

Addressing his colleagues Monday, Murphy said: “I don’t think we’ve bottomed out on the recession yet. When we come back in January, we may face more cuts. We may have to cut through the bone, down to the marrow and then cut some more bone.”

Staff researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.