Lawmakers Target State’s Unfilled Positions

Tackling the daunting task of ridding California’s bureaucracy of thousands of phantom employees, lawmakers approved changes this week designed to hasten the elimination of vacant jobs in state agencies.

A plan approved by the Legislature’s powerful budget writing committee calls for slightly more than 1,700 vacant positions to be abolished.

The plan requires the state controller to drop from the books any jobs that have remained open for six consecutive months during the previous fiscal year. Under current law, a position must be vacant from October through June--a rigid nine-month period.

The change would help close--though is unlikely to eliminate--a loophole whereby agency managers transfer employees in and out of vacant positions to keep the posts from being abolished.

“These are all good steps,” said Craig Cornett, director of criminal justice and state administration for the legislative analyst’s office. “There’s no quick fix to make this go away.”

In another budget-related matter, state revenue jumped an additional $537 million beyond expectations in May, adding to pressure on Gov. Gray Davis and Democratic lawmakers to grant a general tax cut. The extra money pushes what already had been an unprecedented surplus above $12.8 billion.

Hoping to improve the way future revenues are spent, lawmakers Wednesday night addressed the vacancy rate problem.

The problem dates to the recession in the early 1990s when state agencies began leaving jobs unfilled to use unspent salaries to cover rising salaries for their real employees as well as overtime costs and other operational expenses. More recently, the state’s sizzling economy has made it tough for some agencies to find new hires, given the tight job market.

A key issue, however, is that the money is being reallocated without legislative approval.

While a 5% vacancy rate is considered part of the normal turnover process, the finance department report found that there were 21,790 vacancies during the 1998-99 fiscal year, bringing the state’s total vacancy rate to 10.5%. Of that figure, more than half were “excessive vacancies,” which have been the target of critics’ scrutiny.

Finance officials estimate that they have since eliminated 1,840 positions and proposed abolishing another 1,736 jobs from 17 of the state’s largest departments, which would bring the total to 3,576.

The figure is far less than the about 10,000 excessive vacancies that agencies are thought to routinely run, but far more than the 164 positions that the controller’s office eliminated during the 1998-99 fiscal year.

“We clearly think there can be more positions eliminated,” Sen. Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga) said. “But we have an agreement with the [Davis] administration and will take the administration at their word that this won’t be an issue next year.”

Still left for the budget committee to tackle is the $537-million windfall. The Department of Finance attributed the increase to further expansion in earnings, resulting in higher income tax payments, along with another increase in sales tax revenue as Californians continue to spend.

The increase came as legislators work to fashion a budget and send the $100-billion spending plan to Davis for his signature by the July 1 start of the new fiscal year.

As a Senate-Assembly committee works to trim about $1 billion from its spending wish list, the extra revenue relieves pressure on Democrats who control the Legislature to trim about $750 million to $1 billion from their version of the new budget. It also fuels Republican efforts to press for tax cuts.

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Times staff writer Dan Morain contributed to this report.