How Many State Jobs Are Being Cut to Pay for This Budget?

The following is a statement from SEANC Executive Director Ardis Watkins on the Budget Agreement:

“The budget agreement announced today raises a question lawmakers refused to answer: how many state jobs are being eliminated to pay for it?

We know legislators want to cut vacant positions across state government — both the House and Senate included cuts in their proposals. If the raises announced today are used to justify those cuts, that is not a savings. That is the legislature making permanent the staffing shortages that have crushed state employees for years, and rewarding itself for failing to pay enough to fill those jobs in the first place.

State employees are already doing the work of those empty positions. Eliminating the positions does not lighten the load. It makes it permanent.

We are grateful for the long-overdue raises for correctional officers, State Highway Patrol troopers, Probation & Parole officers, and other law enforcement personnel. Those increases are earned.

But a 3% raise for the rest of the state government does not keep up with the cost of living, and it does not begin to compensate for years of understaffing that this budget threatens to make permanent. And for state retirees, a 2.5% one-time bonus is not a cost-of-living adjustment. It is the ninth consecutive year North Carolina has failed to deliver a real COLA to the people who built this state.

Lawmakers also cannot honestly say what eliminating these positions will cost the state long-term. North Carolina has not formally studied the cost of state employee turnover since the Perdue administration, when the figure was estimated at roughly $400 million. That was more than a decade ago.

SEANC is asking lawmakers a simple question: How many positions are you cutting? In which agencies? And what happens to the work?”