Gov. Rick Scott wants to cut more than 1,000  jobs from the state's already lean workforce. (Photo by Nathan Edwards via FLGov.com)

Gov. Rick Scott wants to cut more than 1,000 jobs from the state’s already lean workforce. (Photo by Nathan Edwards via FLGov.com)

By Ashley Lopez
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

The state’s ever-shrinking workforce will get even smaller if Gov. Rick Scott has his way.

Scott’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year includes hefty cuts to state employee positions. More than 1,000 jobs are on the chopping block — a 1.2 percent cut to the state’s already-lean workforce, the Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald Tallahassee bureau reports.

According to the Times/Herald, Scott plans to cut these jobs even though the state has a $1 billion surplus. However, that extra money is going to tax cuts.

The Times/Herald reports:

Scott proposes cost savings by cutting 1,353 positions from a total of 114,444 state jobs, a decision sure to disappoint many of his agency heads. For instance, the Department of Corrections, which has been battling an image problem after a spate of prison deaths, requested 654 new positions. But Scott is proposing only more than 300.

According to the News Service of Florida, “most of the positions would come from the Department of Health; the agency would shed 758 full-time positions.”

And as The Tallahassee Democrat points out, Scott’s plan also “doesn’t include across-the-board raises or performance bonuses for state employees.”

The Tallahassee Democrat reported:

Scott’s budget recommendations would cut about 1,017 positions, bringing the state workforce down to about 113,484 positions. Most, but not all, of the positions are currently vacant, and more will become vacant over the coming months.

Linda Edson, legislative co-chair for the Florida Retired Educators Association, a nonprofit service organization, said she was “horrified” by Scott’s recommendations. State workers last got an across-the-board raise in 2013, their first such raise in six years. In 2011, lawmakers passed a measure requiring Florida Retirement System participants to chip in 3 percent of their pay toward their retirement.

“It’s a slap in the face for state workers,” Edson said. “Here they’ve had to put in 3 percent in their retirement, and that’s money that when they were hired it was understood that they wouldn’t have to pay.”

These jobs cuts would hit an already very lean — and largely understaffed — state government.

Last year, I produced a series for the Florida Center For Investigative Reporting and WGCU about the state’s shrinking workforce. There had been widespread problems throughout the state’s agencies, many of which could be attributed at least partly to staff cuts over the past decade.

Even though a limited state government policy has been in place since Republican Gov. Jeb Bush was in office, Scott’s administration has instituted the deepest cuts of any governor.

Despite the fact the state’s population has grown by 4 million since 1998 and its budget has increased by $25 billion since 2000, the state has about 10,000 fewer established positions than it did 15 years ago.

Florida’s government has been operating at its lowest staffing levels in nearly two decades. The state’s average number of state workers per 10,000 in population is half the national average.

Even as the state’s economy improves and its population booms — Florida is now the third most populous state in the nation — there is no interest among state officials in increasing state government staffing. In fact, there’s only interest in making it smaller.

Months after I reported on the state’s workforce numbers, another report showed things were even worse.

The Tallahassee Democrat reported earlier this month that the state’s “main personnel systems fell by nearly 11,000 jobs during Gov. Rick Scott’s first term — a faster rate of reduction than any governor has recorded … and Florida remains dead last in both its per-capita size and cost of state personnel”:

The annual report, compiled by the Department of Management Services under a legislative mandate, does not guage the transferred costs of jobs privatized with contractors, such as thousands of state prison positions. Automating, consolidating and privatizing government services began in a big way under Gov. Jeb Bush, between 1998 and 2006.

General workforce numbers leveled off under Gov. Charlie Crist, but the downward trend resumed – and accelerated – with Scott’s arrival in 2011.The State Personnel System — the Career Service, Selected Exempt and Senior Management jobs – accounts for 61.6 percent of state employment, spread among 36 agencies under Scott, or under him and the Cabinet.

The number of established positions in the personnel system fell by 10,867 in the past five years, which includes the last six months of Crist’s term. The number of employees in those positions fell even more, from 105,031 in mid-2010 to 89,686 as of last June 30.

State agencies have struggled to fulfill their duties in light of massive job losses, but one agency in particular had hoped to hire additional workers to address its problems in the coming fiscal year.

A few days ago, the head of the Florida Department of Corrections blamed job cuts on some of the agencies deeper troubles, which include allegations of widespread inmate abuse and corruption.

However, Scott’s new budget “falls far short of the 654 vacancies that his new corrections secretary, Julie Jones, wanted filled in her budget request,” the Miami Herald reports. Instead, Scott has only promised to set aside money to fill “critical” positions.