Branstad: New state employees may face pink slips

Gov. Terry Branstad said Tuesday he doubts state agencies can cut an extra $84 million in mandated reduction yet this fiscal year, but he hopes to save money by terminating some employees who were recently hired by the outgoing Culver administration to fill vacancies created by an early-retirement program.

Branstad, who was sworn in for his fifth term as Iowa governor last Friday, expressed his regrets to new state employees who may face pink slips, but he said Iowa currently has more government than it can afford and he intends to reduce the cost and scope of state government.

“We have a situation where a whole lot of new people have been hired that we're going to review,” Branstad told reporters during his weekly news conference. Culver administration officials indicated about 1,000 jobs that were left open when nearly 2,200 senior state workers who took an early-retirement incentive had been refilled – many of them involving critical services or public safety duties.

Branstad said he wants his new team of state agency administrators to determine which positions were “absolutely necessary” to fill.

“The situation is that the budget has been badly mismanaged and decisions have not been made timely and now we're going in and trying to clean up the mess and make the best out of it,” he said. “I'm sorry about the way that things have been mismanaged, but we're going to do things differently. We're going to restore stability and predictability and we're going to do advance planning. For the future, we're not going to have these things happen. I can't help what's happened in the past. But I came here to correct this mess and to straighten out the financial situation in this state and make sure that we have a sustainable budget for the future.”

Before ending his four-year term last week, former Gov. Chet Culver issued a detailed list of nearly $84 million in legislatively mandated cuts that were to be accomplished yet this fiscal year, which ends June 30.

Included among the list of executive-branch reductions submitted by Culver were proposed savings of $27.3 million in human services, $23.3 million in corrections, and $6 million from community colleges. Branstad said Tuesday he doubted all the proposed savings could be achieved by June 30 and the state may actually end up supplementing appropriations to finish out the fiscal year – even with the House Republican proposed cuts that would pare general-fund spending by about $6.5 million.

“The fiscal year's is already more than half over and there are a lot of decisions that have not been made wisely in the past that we want to correct,” Branstad said. “Some of those cuts hit really heavily in corrections and human services that could jeopardize the health and safety of Iowa citizens.”

The governor said he expected some of the proposed reductions would have to be “backfilled” – most likely from the state's surplus ending balance to avoid cuts to vital services.

“Most agencies are going to have to live with these cuts,” Branstad said, noting community colleges would be expected to pare their budgets by $6 million by June 30 even though college officials indicated last week that there were under the impression they would be spared from further spending reductions.

“It's going to be somewhat painful,” Branstad said, “but we are going to do it.”

Legislative Democrats said GOP actions now fly in the face of campaign promises they made to reduce state spending by $200 million to $300 million yet this fiscal year once they got into power and the 2011 session got under way. Republicans now control the Iowa House by a 60-40 margin and Democrats hold a 26-23 edge in the Senate.