Paterson: 898 State Worker Layoffs By Year's End

Governor Paterson announced today that he'll be laying off 898 state workers by the end of 2010, in order to reduce the state's work force and save $250 million (the state plans to decrease the work force overall by 2,000). And Paterson laid the blame on unions, for not accepting pay lags or furloughs, "I'm not proud of that, but that is significant progress in trying to make sure there is a shared sacrifice in the deficit reduction and in an attempt to keep our budget balanced. I know that I'll get blamed, and I'll accept it, but the people in the leadership of the public employee unions know that they escorted me here."

The Times Union has some details on the layoffs ("In the Department of Transportation, 140 jobs will be cut"—Paterson said, "But the good news is it will not affect snow removal"). The outgoing governor added, "I didn't want Attorney General Cuomo or Mr. Paladino to have to take a layoff plan that I imposed on them. ... It was my decision that we had to go in this direction and I'll take full responsibility for it."

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By Jen Chung in News on October 28, 2010 12:46 PM

Comments [rss]

bonu$baby

When it's 89,000 workers then you can issue a press release. 898, and I'm sure they are all qualifying for fat ass padded pensions.

SP's Ghost

I wish we could keep Paterson. Thank you Gothamist (asshats) for feeding the anti Paterson fires earlier this year, and contributing to his political demise, paving the way for the dismal choice of either the neo fascist zombie Paladino, or the status quo Cuomo.

Petey

gothamist doesn't have as much influence as you think it does. Its a liberal biased cut & paste of news articles.

hotstepper

to support Paterson you'd have to ignore his repeated gross mishandling of our state's affairs and his entire lack of clout within the Albany establishment which, like it or not, is vital to get anything done in NYS. and i doubt that Gothamist commenters had much to do with his not running (see: Democratic party establishment). but nice try anyway.

MT

Can someone help me do the math? How do 898 workers cost the state $250 million. Is this over a hugely extended period of time? Is it according to some esoteric economic formula? Or are state workers really that expensive?

Politburo

The $250 million is in the context of the 2,000 positions being eliminated. That's still pretty high at $125,000 per, even if you consider health and pension benefits. Most of the positions appear to be at the lower end of the pay scale.

MT

That seems like a lot of money for an average worker.

Are there any HR people out there who can comment? I'm genuinely curious about this.

youngpro

comes out to about $94,000/employee using the standard 4/3 ratio (employee salary is about 3/4's what the actual cost is in terms of benefits). $94k is still a lot more realistic, but the figure probably still factors in pension contributions. these people probably earn about $50-$70k each.