Letters to be mailed out to nearly 500 officers
Michael Taylor, Lynda Gledhill, The San Francisco Chronicle
The California Highway Patrol plans to send out letters as early as next week warning nearly 500 officers that they could be laid off because of the state’s budget crisis.
The layoff possibility was broadcast to all CHP offices Wednesday afternoon, via conference call, and clearly irked the patrol’s top commander, Commissioner Dwight “Spike” Helmick.
Helmick said the possibility of laying off 469 officers is unprecedented, but a spokeswoman for Gov. Gray Davis stressed that no final decisions have been made on whether any law enforcement officers will be let go.
“To the best of my knowledge,” Helmick said, “we’ve never laid anyone off in my 35 years (in the CHP).”
In addition to the 469 officers who might be laid off, some 370 “nonuniformed” employees, such as truck inspectors, dispatchers and clerical workers, would also have to go.
“We’re hoping that is not a step that has to happen,” said Davis spokeswoman Hilary McLean.
Every state agency has been ordered to prepare for possible layoffs, Davis officials said, and the number of notices sent is likely to far exceed the actual number of layoffs.
Helmick said if the layoffs happen, they will substantially affect the CHP’s operations and force the agency to cancel some successful programs.
Helmick said one of the first things to be throttled back would be the CHP’s anti-terrorist truck inspection program. It would go from 24 hours a day to 16 hours a day.
Also affected would be checkpoints for drivers under the influence, drug- sniffing dog programs and narcotics task forces. But the anti-terrorist patrols at the state’s big bridges, most of which are in the Bay Area, would not be affected.
At one point Wednesday, after inquiries by The Chronicle, Gov. Gray Davis’ administration abruptly canceled orders to have the CHP send out the notices.
But then late in the day, Davis’ administration said that the letters would go out after all. Initially, the CHP wasn’t going to send out the letters until late Friday afternoon, after the CHP academy’s cadets had graduated. Then, after the momentary cancellation, Davis officials decided the letters would indeed be mailed -- but it won’t be until next week.
“In sensitivity to the celebration and to the families that would be there, it was not an appropriate day,” McLean said.
In April, Davis ordered department heads to come up with a plan to unilaterally cut labor expenses by 10 percent. His proposed 2003-04 budget relies on state employee concessions or layoffs to help close a budget gap of at least $38 billion.
All state agencies will be sending out so-called employee surplus notices sometime over the next two weeks, said Lynelle Jolley, a spokeswoman for the Department of Personnel Administration.
The number of notices sent will be greater than the number of layoffs, assuming job reductions become necessary, she said. That is because the state has determined the classifications of jobs that will be cut, and who gets laid off depends on senority.
The state and its worker unions are negotiating to try to trim $855 million from worker costs. Only if those negotiations are unsuccessful will there be layoffs. Considerations will also be made for public health and safety, Jolley said.
Helmick said that if California’s chief statewide law enforcement agency were forced to lay off the equivalent of seven percent of its 6,500-officer force, many officers assigned to the nonpatrol programs would be put back in patrol cars.
The layoffs would apply to officers who have been on the job about a year and to the academy cadets. If the cadets were laid off, that alone will constitute a waste of $17 million, the amount it costs to train 138 cadets for 27 weeks.
Another casualty of the layoffs would be a Central Valley CHP effort to curtail the horrendous fatal crashes in which many farmworkers are killed when a single van carrying a group to or from work goes off the road.