Daley to eliminate 220 vacant city jobs to prevent future tax hikes
Mayor Daley said Monday he would eliminate 220 vacant city jobs, cancel cost-of living pay raises for 3,500 non-union employees and order those bureaucrats to take 24 unpaid days off to honor his promise to keep his hand out of taxpayers’ pockets in 2010.
Together with cuts in non-personnel spending, the latest round of bureaucratic belt-tightening will reduce spending by $64 million.
(Rich Hein/Sun-Times)
“It’s because we’ve cut spending that we will be able to maintain basic services. …At the very time that other cities are raising taxes and cutting basic services, thankfully, we are not,” Daley said.
Asked whether the 2010 budget he will present on Wednesday would include layoffs, the mayor said, “We hope there aren’t any because, once you lay a person off, they’re not ever coming back to work in government or in the private sector. That’s the sad thing….There isn’t much hope out there in the private sector.”
Earlier this year, Daley ordered city bureaucrats to take 16 unpaid days off, to turn up the heat on union leaders to agree to similar concessions.
The strategy worked.
Forty unions signed a two-year deal that included: substituting comp time for cash overtime; taking 24 unpaid furlough days through June 30, 2011 and converting all city holidays -- nine for hourly employees and 12 for those with monthly salaries — to unpaid days.
After threatening 1,500 layoffs, Daley fired just 431 employees, all members of AFSCME Council 31 and Teamsters Local 726, the only two unions that refused to go along.
The 24 new furlough days for city managers match the 2010 concessions made by their union colleagues.
“We’re all in the same boat. We have to figure out how we row together—both with the taxpayers and government employees,” Daley said.
The mayor also announced reorganization moves aimed at delivering services more efficiently:
• As disclosed by the Chicago Sun-Times months ago, the Department of Streets and Sanitation’s clout-ridden Bureau of Electricity will be parceled out to three other departments — Transportation; General Services and Aviation—freeing Streets and San to concentrate on refuse collection and snow removal.
• Installation and maintenance of red-light cameras will shift from the Office of Emergency Management and Communications to Transportation.
• Responsibility for water bills will move from the Department of Water Management to Revenue to consolidate all collections in one department.
• Job-training for individuals will shift from the Department of Community Development to Family and Support Services.
• As previously announced, responsibility for policing the city’s scandal-plagued minority business program and certifying minority businesses will shift from the Department of Procurement Services to the Office of Compliance.