State Employees Feel the Sting of Terse Dismissals

Days before his election victory, Arnold Schwarzenegger stood outside the Capitol and brandished a broom, symbolizing a commitment to “clean house” in Sacramento.

But some state employees didn’t expect the end to come so swiftly. Some were dismissed before Christmas despite the governor’s pledge to wait. And others were notified unceremoniously by voice mail or in terse conversations.

“In the business world, we don’t treat people that way,” said Maurice Johannessen, former secretary of Veterans Affairs who lost his job in November and who has worked for many years as a real estate broker.

But the governor’s office said the administration had to move quickly to put a new team in place and insisted that it was nothing unusual. “This is a normal transition process, when government changes control,” said spokesman Vince Sollitto. “It is hardly out of the ordinary and hardly surprising.”

No one forced from a job was stripped of benefits, according to the administration. People are paid for unused vacation time and receive up to two months of free health-care coverage, depending on their departure date.

In his first two months in office, Schwarzenegger has either fired or accepted the resignations of 221 political appointees, from senior members of former Gov. Gray Davis’ Cabinet to junior aides working in obscure apolitical posts.

To date, Schwarzenegger has hired nearly 170 people, with many more positions left to be filled. He has replaced only about half of the 221 political appointees who have left the government. And of 2,500 positions on state boards and commissions under the governor’s purview, 232 remain vacant.

Those who’ve been dismissed said they were informed in ways that were needlessly painful and, in some instances, humiliating.

Kathleen Hamilton, director of the state’s Department of Consumer Affairs under Davis, said her assistant got a phone call from a Schwarzenegger aide on Dec. 4. She wasn’t there and the aide left a message saying, “Tell the director this is the call she’s been dreading,” Hamilton said.

“My poor secretary burst into tears and called me on my cellphone and said, ‘Oh my God, are they getting ready to fire you?’ So I called this person the following day and was told they were going to replace me and I needed to be gone that day,” Hamilton said.

Mira Tonis, an analyst trainee for the California Integrated Waste Management Board who once handled Davis’ e-mail correspondence, said she came to work Dec. 18 and found a voice-mail message had been left the night before from the governor’s office, “thanking us for our services to the state and that, effective today, [our] services were no longer required.” Tonis said she opposed the recall but voted for Schwarzenegger on the second part of the ballot. She said four colleagues in the office were dismissed in similar fashion.

“You don’t tell them on voice mail. That’s just a cowardly approach,” Tonis said.

Schwarzenegger’s office describes the departures as part of the natural turnover that takes place whenever a new administration comes to power. It is a new governor’s prerogative to replace the political appointees and put his own team in place, according to Schwarzenegger’s staff.

“The people have elected a new governor who has selected a new administration,” said spokesman Sollitto. “Some political appointees for the previous administration have resigned, and some have been told their service to the state is no longer requested.”

Some of the state employees who were dismissed were philosophical about their treatment.

“I was canned the day after Schwarzenegger was sworn in,” said Stephen Green, who had been communications director for the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency. He said he was “told to clear out that day. I wasn’t surprised. When you have a political job, you never own it. I thought there might be some transition, but they weren’t interested in that.”

But others said they were upset about the perfunctory way they were fired -- and by the timing. At a news conference Nov. 18, the day after he was sworn in, Schwarzenegger was asked about layoffs of state workers. He said he intended to follow through on such plans as a cost-cutting measure, but vowed that he would not force anyone out of a job during the holidays.

“I can guarantee you that I will not lay anyone off in December or before Christmas,” he said.

Tonis, who worked nearly four years for the Davis administration and was in the analyst’s job for three weeks before her pre-Christmas ouster, said: “This guy came over from Austria and I believed his message -- that he had no political agenda and wanted to make things better. And I’m thinking what a breath of fresh air. And lo and behold, the guy can’t do what he said he would: make a promise and keep it.”

People who have been released by the new regime said the method was much the same: a quick phone call or voice-mail message coupled with an insistence that they leave immediately.

Steven Gourley, who headed the state Department of Motor Vehicles, said he learned of his dismissal in a cellphone call with a Schwarzenegger Cabinet secretary on the day of the swearing-in. Gourley was due to have throat surgery the next day and asked if he could collect his things later in the week. He offered to push his possessions to a corner of the room. Marybel Batjer, the governor’s Cabinet secretary, told him he needed to leave that night, he said.

Johannessen said he learned of his firing at 7:30 p.m. on the day of Schwarzenegger’s inauguration. He said he got a phone call from a woman he did not know who works in Schwarzenegger’s appointments office.

“Some young lady called and asked if I was Secretary Johannessen,” he said in an interview. “I said yes and she said, ‘I’m calling you to say your service was no longer needed.’ I said, ‘When is this going to take place?’ And she said, ‘You’ll be leaving tomorrow.’ ”

“One thing that’s wrong with something like that is you don’t call someone and tell them they’re out of there tomorrow. That to me is a schlock way of doing that,” Johannessen said.

Jettisoning staff on political grounds may be within a governor’s rights, but it is not necessarily the best management practice, said Jennifer Chatman, a professor of business at UC Berkeley and an expert in organizational behavior.

It signals to the employees who remain that political affinity is prized above work ethic, ability and other skills central to the administration’s success, she said.

“If all they care about is one’s political affiliation, then they did the right thing,” Chatman said. “But I find it extremely hard to believe that one’s political affiliation or service to the Davis administration is the only criterion by which highly valued performance should be defined. I find it a myopic approach, and it will have a huge impact on the rest of the organization.... That’s going to send a message that you need to worry more about having the right political values than about coming up with well-informed perspectives, good work and high-quality projects.”

Some of the former Davis aides who’ve been dismissed said that when they took over from Republican Gov. Pete Wilson’s administration in 1999, they presided over a decidedly more compassionate transition.

“I can tell you with certainty we did not deal with the former Wilson people that way,” Hamilton said. “We worked with them on transition plans. I had people from the Wilson administration still in my department for a year. So it was surprising to me.”

Given the results of the recall election, those who’ve lost their jobs should have seen it coming, said Margita Thompson, Schwarzenegger’s press secretary. “I’m a little bit surprised that these people were surprised,” she said.