County Freezes Hiring in Wake of Budget Woes : Government: Deficit also prompts ban on promotions. ‘We have locked the gates in front of the personnel department,’ a spokesman says.

San Diego’s county government announced a virtual ban on hiring and promotions Thursday, seeking to sharply cut its payroll in the face of a $32-million budget deficit that may prompt even more drastic measures in coming weeks.

With the possible exception of case-by-case hiring of nurses at the three county-operated hospitals, county Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey froze hiring of full-time, part-time, student and all other workers as of 2 p.m. Tuesday, according to a memo to department heads released Thursday.

Job postings have been removed from county bulletin boards, and no job examinations will be given, Hickey ordered. No promotions will be approved, either. Temporary workers whose contracts expire during the freeze will not be rehired, and full-timers temporarily working in higher-level jobs must go back to their old posts when their appointments expire, Hickey ordered.

All 24-hour institutions, such as the Hillcrest Receiving Home, Juvenile Hall and the county’s three hospitals, are, for the first time, affected by the freeze.

“We have locked the gates in front of the personnel department,” said county spokesman Bob Lerner.

The indefinite freeze extends the hiring ban imposed July 1 to combat the first of what became a series of budget deficits for the current fiscal year. The freeze has resulted in 1,200 unfilled positions among the county’s 17,000 workers, but an unspecified number of jobs were filled as administrators granted exceptions to the freeze.

County supervisors filled the initial $30-million gap in their $1.9 billion budget with program cuts and one-time cost-cutting measures. But with both property tax and state revenue continuing to fall below expectations, an additional deficit of $32 million has cropped up.

By Dec. 17, county administrators are expected to present the supervisors with options for eliminating $15 million to $25 million of the shortfall, amid fears among some that layoffs of full-time employees may be part of the plan.

Assistant Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said the hiring freeze, the most sweeping in a decade, could leave hundreds more jobs vacant within a month.

“We need to stop the outflow of dollars,” said Janssen, who added that the county spends about $26 million every two weeks on employee salaries.

Among the hardest hit departments could be the county registrar of voters, where as many as 200 temporary employees are needed from March to June to handle new voter registrations, send out 250,000 absentee ballots and process the voluminous paperwork of an election that will include a presidential primary.

Discussions have included the idea of seeking volunteers to do the work, but Registrar of Voters Conny McCormack said volunteers could not accomplish the tasks, which she described as “backbreaking.”

“This is catastrophic for us, and we’re going to have to have some kind of exemption,” McCormack said.