Malloy Says Reduce Department Budgets
Finally we have an administration that gets how to enact budget reductions, Tuesday’s press release outlines the budget numbers departments have to hit along with the helpful reduction in personnel to get there suggestions. I’ve liked to it below.
With some budgets, labor is the only way to achieve savings. But with others, now it’s time to figure out how to get there. Here’s where forced ranking can help the budget challenged figure out who is essential and not. In forced ranking you start with the most indispensable person/position. In simplistic terms, if you were in the ice cream making businesses the most indispensable person starts with whoever makes the ice cream because without the product, you have no business. Now let’s say you have 5 ice cream makers, who is ranked one? The answer should be the person who can manage themselves most, since if you only had one employee, the ice cream maker, then they would have to do all the rest of the jobs to at least get to a functional level of business.
What isn’t evident from this process is the manager making this list. The sign of a good manager of course, is being able to replace themselves with employees that actually run the business. That should free up the manager for more strategic tasks, like growing the business. Too often managers don’t do that, but that’s another post for another day.
The Connecticut departments that don’t cut management are doomed. I hope someone is paying attention up in Hartford.
Attached, please find Governor Malloy’s proposal to close the $1.6 billion deficit. A few points:
- These are the recommendations that were sent to the legislature, and if enacted, it will be left to each Commissioner to determine how to achieve the savings outlined. They will have to reduce their agency budgets by the dollar amounts you see, and OPM thinks the number of suggested layoffs will help them get there. Some commissioners might choose to lay off more people to get to that number, some might choose to lay off a lower number — and find additional savings elsewhere.
- The total proposed number of personnel reductions (6,466) include 1,000 positions which are vacant and will be eliminated, in addition to 5,466 layoffs.