‘Mayors’ offices to be hit hardest’

Four departments are currently preparing a list of people who will be affected by the government furloughs, and the mayors’ offices will most likely see the most number of layoffs, according to Esther Fleming, the governor’s special assistant for administration.

The four departments preparing furlough and non-renewal letters are the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs, the Department of Public Works, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, and the Office of the Governor, Fleming said yesterday. She has given the department heads until Monday to prepare the letters.

“Basically, we’re targeting the upgraded positions first before we can be able to touch any other areas,” she said.

The administration contends that with the recent passage of the $156.76 million Fiscal Year 2009 budget, they have no choice but to lay off government workers in order to stay within the budget ceiling. The exact number of employees who will be affected is still unknown.

Fleming said she was able to meet with each of the government departments to determine the amount they need to reduce their budget by.

Most of the layoffs will come from the mayors’ offices, she said. Within the Office of the Governor, a large number of people within the Emergency Management Office would be affected.

Earlier this week, Tinian Mayor Jose P. San Nicolas said he was looking at implementing a 60-day furlough if all other austerity measures being considered fail.

Civil service employees cannot be terminated. For employees whose contracts expire April 11, they will receive a non-renewal letter, while those whose contracts last through Sept. 30 will receive a 30-day notices of termination, Fleming said.

Reduced work hours, she said, is not an option.

“Even reduced hours will be very insignificant,” she said. “The only way for us is to start preparing them to be taken down, to carry all the way to Sept. 30, so we do not incur a deficit.”

Gov. Benigno Fitial, who vetoed the budget that was later overridden by the Legislature, has said politics has become involved. Many members of the Legislature say a budget ceiling was necessary, as hiring continued to occur despite declining revenue.

When asked why the administration is not pleased with the budget when the revenue projections provided by the administration were used as a guide, Fleming said it was not balanced. By not incorporating cost-cutting measures like unpaid holidays and austerity Fridays, as well as reprogramming authority for the governor, the Legislature passed an unbalanced budget, she said.

The Legislature, in the budget, did include one cost-cutting measure by reducing the employee contribution rate to the Retirement Fund from 18 to 11 percent.

The administration authored a separate piece of legislation, introduced in the House of Representatives in February, which would implement unpaid holidays and austerity Fridays. The House has yet to vote on it and several of the scheduled austerity days have passed.

Fleming said they are no longer counting on the Legislature to pass the austerity measure bill.

“We’re not going to count anymore on austerity holidays. I don’t think we’ll ever get through to them,” she said, although, she added, the administration will ask once again for the cost-cutting measures when they submit the Fiscal Year 2010 budget proposal.

Some lawmakers have said a gradual reduction in the government workforce could have prevented a mass layoff because the private sector could have absorbed the numbers, something Fitial disagrees with.

“I think it’s very presumptuous for anyone to think the private sector has a lot of vacancies,” he said. “As a matter of fact, talking to the private sector they’re telling me they also have employees they want to get rid of because business is not good.”

And, Fleming said, those businesses not laying off people are renewing the contracts of nonresident workers.

“With the layoffs, it’s going to be really hard for a lot of our people to find jobs,” she added.

Will the impending implementation of federalization on June 1, which will extend U.S. immigration laws to the CNMI, including employment, have any affect on job availability in the private sector?

No, Fitial said, because “it will be delayed,” he said of the start date. The governor has asked the Department of Homeland Security for a 180-day extension.