Editor’s note: This post has been updated.
In a letter responding to Mayor Mike McGinn’s appearance on KUOW yesterday, the city employees behind the Working Seattle web site called McGinn out for continuing to target strategic advisors and “senior-level management” for budget cuts. (Last month, McGinn announced that he was putting a proposal to slash 200 strategic advisor and management jobs “on pause” until the mid-year budget process.)
“Calling for reductions in ‘senior-level management’ is not the solution, regardless of whether it’s integrated into the budget process,” the letter says. “We have been suggesting that you assign a target dollar amount to the departments, and have the departments come up with the cuts, after conducting a thorough functional review across all programs and classifications.”
The letter also says that managers and strategic advisors are the only city employees who have been asked to do an inventory of their positions; points out that the number of jobs categorized as “strategic advisors” increased because existing employees were reclassified, not because of a huge uptick in political appointments; and suggests that McGinn pick a dollar target for reductions, rather than a number of positions.
As we’ve noted previously, cutting top-level positions may, paradoxically, hit mid-level managers and recent hires the hardest, because the city’s civil service rules protect non-exempt workers based on seniority.
McGinn’s spokesman Mark Matassa confirms that the mid-year review will specifically look at strategic advisors and senior-level management positions.
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Cutting senior-level management is not the solution…
Right. So what is the solution?
Why don't they just say what they mean? “Do what you've always done. Cut fire, police, libraries, programs for the homeless. Cut services. Don't cut our $100k a year jobs.”
If memory serves, the Mayor's office is encrusted with over 200 'strategic advisors', each of which is being paid on average upwards of $160k/year.
I say we need to prune this Christmas tree of strategic advice and use the money saved to fund essential city services like emergency services, law enforcement, libraries, schools, and general maintenance.
How's that for strategic advice, Mayor McGinn?
They gave a solution: give departments a dollar amount to cut and see what they say. Maybe the top ten people can take a 10% pay cut instead of losing a position? Maybe there are too many of something other than SAs?
The problem is not the cuts, its that McGinn seems to have no real basis for what he is cutting other than some misguided antagonism against one class of employees.
Dollar amount/percentage budget reduction targets do make sense in many cases. However, the vast majority of work and decision-making that departments put into this process are made by Executives, Managers, and Strategic Advisors. So, how many of these people are going to recommend laying-off themselves, or others that they work directly with? I'm not disparaging these three classes of employees (I fall into one of those classes and, no, not in the MO) – it's just largely human nature.
One way to circumvent this conflict of interest is for the executive to send a clear message that management needs to offer up some of their own. Did the Mayor's approach lack sensitivity? Certainly, yes. Should the Manager/SA targets have been rolled-out with percentage targets and made part of a broader strategy to identify non-essential services? IMO, yes.
I'm not deflecting blame for the MO – they screwed up in regard to tactics. I do agree, however, with the broader strategy. There is too much management in the City, it has been growing, and now there is a need to seriously address it – just asking for a percentage target reduction will not do that.
Really? Upwards of $160K a year? Get your facts straight.
And, if you look at the budget/position reductions made at City Light alone for 2010, over 25% of the individuals cut were strategic advisors. How's that for human nature?
But, the crux of the matter here is that the Mayor is gunning for these classifications at the exclusion of all other classifications and/or programs. It makes no sense. And it's not in the best interest of the City. How about taking a grown up, rational approach and look at everything?
Check Lbloom.net – in 2007 the mayor's office had 22 positions with one making 160k or more. The average salary cost was about 75k
One thing I'd like to see the mayor suggest is that public outreach programs be done by staff instead of outside consultants. It could keep staff working and make actual employees more tuned into the public's point of view.
I'm puzzled about this whole notion of unintended consequences. You write that cutting “top-level” positions will hit “mid-level managers” and “recent hires” the hardest, but then point out that civil-service rules on seniority only protect *non-exempt* workers.
Aren't “top-level” positions by definition *exempt* rather than non-exempt? And therefore not protected? And aren't low-ranking managers — and front-line staff — non-exempt and therefore protected? And so therefore doesn't McGinn's approach make sense if his goal is to protect city services rather than the jobs of city advisors?
I can't tell if I'm missing something or if Working Seattle is a bunch of strategic advisors trying to strategically confuse the issues at hand in order to protect their jobs.
OPM had another 20 positions
The Mayor defined and targeted the “senior-level management” as strategic advisors, managers and executives. problem is, his definition doesn't hold. The majority of these positions are not “exempt” – they are civil service. But he continues to target them. This has been one of the problems with the Mayor – and one that it seems working seattle has been trying to clarify, not confuse.
Your memory doesn't serve you well. The numbers are way off.
I absolutely agree people to do whatever it takes to protect their job, but some of you are going to extra mile to put other employees at risk. There are 300 fat ass senior people doing nothing other than sitting and adding no extra value to the lives of Seattle citizens. Some of you are confronting the new adminstration by blogging rumors, which the city will soon find out. Let us stop antigonizing our leadership in the city and work with them in a peaceful fashion. Some of my bosses were sitting on the computer blogging anti Bushnell gossip all day.
We need to behave like grown up people.
Some of my bosses were sitting on the computer blogging anti Bushnell gossip all day..
If that's true you should go to ethics and do a whistle blower complaint.
For a cogent, thoughtful, and common sense approach, see City Council Member Sally Clark's message on this topic at the following link:
(http://www.workingseattle.org/announcement/coun...)
Her message is grounded in harsh economic realities, grasps all the salient issues, resonates with the principles of good government, values public workers, and preserves core community values.
I encourage the Mayor to follow a course in addressing projected budget shortfalls that is very similar to that outlined by Sally Clark in this message. If he were to do so, citizens, ratepayers and City employees of all stripes will be much better served (and certainly much more fairly served) as a result in the difficult weeks that ahead.
Here's a little history on the “strategic advisor” position: Before the mid-1990s a City employee's pay class was based entirely on the number of people he or she supervised and on the City Budget he or she controlled. But that didn't take into consideration the fact that many City employees have control over ISSUES that represent millions of dollars of exposure to City residents, even when that employee doesn't control a lot of people or a large City budget. So, way back in the Rice Administration (no this wasn't a nefarious recent political deal), we created a class of employees called “strategic advisors” whose salaries were not based on how many people they supervised but on the impact their work would have on the people of Seattle. (Duh!) What now sounds like some group of politicos, in fact includes many of the most critical brains in City government. They are the people who manage contracts and issues worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the City. To focus cuts on them, aside from the functions they serve, is just nonsense.
Maybe a cut in consultant contracts might be an easier and as cost effective first step.
The seniority rule applies to the years you have in your current job title. If you used to be in position x and then took a manager job or your existing job was re-classed to a manager job then your seniority is only your time in that new manager job. So some who are managers or strategic advisors have not always been that but may in fact be long time city employees with a lot of knowledge and experience. Sadly, I fall into that class. Over 20 years with the city doing valuable work and just 5 months in my manager job title. I am toast, or at least I like to think of myself as an unintended consequence. Also due to the “order of layoffs”, not even the departments themselves will know who for sure will be layed off as it is only the City personnel office that has all the info to decide the order of lay offs. The departments may find themselves all of a sudden losing valuable expertise and experience. For example, they decide a certain function/position is the lowest priority but in fact the actual person who will lose their job is not the person even doing that low priority work! It is the person with the lowest seniority and their experience and expertise may not even fit with the job that the person who was bumped had. these are the sorts of unintended consequences. It would be better to give the departments all the tools available to them and let them decide how to meet the budget cut that they need to. There is a separate effort underway to look at “span of control” and that effort should be allowed to proceed to insure that there are not too many managers.
85% of city costs are in personnel??? At first blush, I thought McGinn's statements on KUOW regarding job cuts was pretty even-handed and conciliatory.
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Upon reflection, I question his numbers. His statements seem reasonable, especially if you take his numbers at face value. One of the things I'm slowly beginning to realize about him, however, is that his numbers should always be questioned.
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85% of what, according to whom?
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I strongly suspect that we're back in that, 'lies, damn lies, and statistics' world, where the Mayor uses them to distort the picture to support his view.
I wonder if the statistics were done by Dr. Bushnell?