The City of Atlanta’s finance department has laid off dozens of employees and wiped out many vacant positions in order to help patch this year’s $140 million budget hole.

The layoffs hit not only senior accountants and policy managers, but office support staff such as administrative assistants. With the elimination of 38 Atlanta jobs, the agency lost nearly a quarter of the 170 authorized positions it had in fiscal year 2008.

In all, the city laid off 372 employees and eliminated 1,116 positions — some filled and some vacant — to address the deficit.

City officials said they laid off employees in an effort to protect public safety jobs and other critical city services. They also based the layoffs for classified employees on job performance and seniority.

“I have every confidence that the current staffing level allows us to do the ongoing level of work in the Department of Finance,” said Chief Operating Officer Greg Giornelli.

The City Council agreed to Mayor Shirley Franklin’s proposal to slash the Finance Department’s funding by $4.1 million, from $15.4 million in fiscal year 2008 to $11.3 million now. Howard Shook, chairman of the council’s finance committee, said the deficit forced tough choices.

“We had to slim down drastically,” Shook said. “And, absolutely, there could not be an argument made that the Finance Department is sacrosanct.”

The overall job cuts left the city with 4,772 employees, which amounts to 847 employees per 100,000 city residents, according to a city report. That report shows Atlanta has fewer employees per capita than St. Louis, Cleveland, Seattle and Kansas City; about the same as Miami; but more than Denver and Charlotte. The average number of employees per capita among those cities is 936, the report says.

Atlanta’s Public Works Department took the hardest hit, losing 120 employees through layoffs. In all, the department lost 225 positions, covering everything from bridge workers to sanitation employees to parking meter enforcement officials.

As a result of the job cuts, the city has reduced how often it inspects bridges and mows the grass in public rights of way, Public Works Commissioner Joe Basista said. The city also has cut its number of pothole repairs crews from three to two, Basista said.

The Police Department lost 192 positions, 69 of which were for school traffic safety monitors that were transferred to the school system. Of the other positions, 17 were for police investigators.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 9:29 am and is filed under jobs, Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.