December 22, 2004: Headlines: COS - Tunisia: Politics: State Government: Green Bay Press-Gazette: Gov. Jim Doyle on Tuesday defended his actions to streamline state government and said he remains on pace to trim the state work force by nearly 10,000 jobs
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December 22, 2004: Headlines: COS - Tunisia: Politics: State Government: Green Bay Press-Gazette: Gov. Jim Doyle on Tuesday defended his actions to streamline state government and said he remains on pace to trim the state work force by nearly 10,000 jobs
Gov. Jim Doyle on Tuesday defended his actions to streamline state government and said he remains on pace to trim the state work force by nearly 10,000 jobs
Gov. Jim Doyle on Tuesday defended his actions to streamline state government and said he remains on pace to trim the state work force by nearly 10,000 jobs
Doyle stands by job cuts, shoots for total of 10,000
By Ben Jones
Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers
APPLETON — Gov. Jim Doyle on Tuesday defended his actions to streamline state government and said he remains on pace to trim the state work force by nearly 10,000 jobs.
“We are very much on pace,” Doyle told the editorial board of The Post-Crescent of Appleton.
The governor refuted media accounts that he has slipped off track on a pledge he made while campaigning for governor in 2002. He had proposed cutting some 10,000 state jobs during two terms, provided he wins re-election in 2006 for another four-year stint.
To cut 10,000 jobs in eight years would require shaving 1,250 positions per year.
The Associated Press reported this week that as of November, Doyle had cut just more than 1,500 jobs since taking office in January 2003, about 700 behind the pace needed to meet his goal.
Doyle said this analysis was “not accurate.”
The governor said the cuts he proposed are made in the state budget, which covers a two-year period and follows the state fiscal year, not the calendar year. He said his first round of cuts occurred in the 2003-05 budget, which runs from July 1, 2003, to June 30, 2005.
State budget director David Schmiedicke said Tuesday that while Doyle is nearing two years in office, there are more than six months left in the budget year.
“Positions are still coming off the payroll,” Schmiedicke said.
T. Lee Hughes, bureau chief of the Wisconsin Associated Press, Milwaukee, defended the AP’s report. “We stand by our story,” he said Tuesday.
Schmiedicke said Doyle proposed cutting 2,900 jobs as part of his first budget. He said the Legislature restored about 600 of those positions.
Doyle said when the 2003-05 budget period ends June 30, about 2,300 jobs will have been eliminated from state government, a large percentage coming from retiring workers.
Basing the job cuts on budget years, as Doyle suggests, the state would have to shed 2,500 positions each budget cycle to hit the 10,000-job goal. So, based on Doyle’s assertion, the state will be about 200 jobs short of this level in June.
But Doyle said the 10,000 mark reflects an approximate number.
“I’ve always been very careful to say that I think approximately 10,000 is the right number,” Doyle said. “That essentially gets us back to where we were 10 years ago.”
As of June 30, the state will employ a total of 67,000 people, Schmiedicke said.
Of those, about 54,000 are employed by the UW System and various state agencies. The rest work in jobs at the UW campus and hospital that are funded by grants or non-state sources of money, he said.
Todd Berry, president of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, said that positions technically are eliminated when they are no longer included in state budgets.
But he said because the state’s budget problems predated Doyle, some state positions already were being held vacant when Doyle took office. Those jobs, while vacant for months, officially were eliminated in the budget Doyle signed in July 2003.
“It may get a little harder to do this down the road,” Berry said.
When this story was posted in December 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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Story Source: Green Bay Press-Gazette
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Tunisia; Politics; State Government
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