After a prolonged struggle to patch up the current budget, the Virginia General Assembly passed a $77 billion spending plan for the next two years that is fully $5 billion higher.
Spending will increase almost 7 percent — yet lawmakers called the session difficult because money was so tight.
During this year’s legislative session, an obvious measure to stanch state spending would have been to “freeze” all vacant job positions for the upcoming two-year budget. Arizona’s Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, took such action in February, but no one in Virginia even proposed it.
The average annual cost for a state job, salary plus benefits, is $68,743. So, how much can be saved by simply not filling the jobs which are currently vacant?
With the help of Del. David Albo’s office, I have found some fascinating numbers that show huge savings are available.
There were 8,927 vacant job positions, not counting faculty at our state universities, as of Dec. 31, 2007. Of these, about 1,000 positions are allocated to prisons, jails and the State Police. These public safety positions were excluded from following calculations.
Let’s take 300 more of these vacant positions and label them as “critical” for the management of our state government — key managers. All other job openings — all 7,627 of them — should be on the table.
These vacant positions should be immediately frozen and kept frozen until such time as our economy turns around and state tax revenues justify filling them.
Freezing those 7,627 vacant state government positions would save an incredible $524.3 million a year — or more than $1 billion during the two-year budget beginning July 1.
And during this two-year freeze, the state could review these 7,627 positions along with the 35,000 jobs state agencies pinpointed nine years ago as candidates for outsourcing to the private sector.
Now, a further analysis of the recent state employment numbers shows something truly fascinating. From Dec. 31, 2006 to Dec. 31, 2007, when it was clear that Virginia was heading into economic turbulence, the state hired 3,949 additional people.
That increase in employment added $271.5 million to our state spending at the very same time when our elected officials knew the state would have to cut expenditures.
If the state really wanted to run its operations more like a business or a family, as it should, it would never have added $271 million in additional payroll just as we were entering an economic slowdown.
And, for sure, instead of taking monies from the rainy-day fund, from teachers and universities, and from our transportation needs in the two years ahead, the General Assembly could have simply frozen 7,627 of the 8,927 “vacant” nonfaculty positions and the budget “problem” would have been resolved.
Next year, we are faced once again with a race for governor.
Hopefully, that campaign will offer a robust and healthy debate on how our government can be better managed.
Freezing vacant government jobs as outlined above is a reasonable management tool that was left off the table this year. Our next governor should not do so.
Michael Thompson is president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, a nonpartisan “solutions tank” in Virginia. He can be reached at [email protected].
