Riverside County Cuts 180 Jobs

As times get tough many counties are looking to cut costs wherever they can and one of the ways that many counties have chosen to cut down on their costs is to get rid of the staffers who man their offices and provide services to the residents of the county. Well, it looks like exactly that has happened to the workers of Riverside County, which has decided to let go of a significant number of workers in order to cut their budget. The county is looking to get rid of about a little but less than 200 workers in order to help with the budget deficit the county is currently facing. On the whole the county needs to make up a deficit of about $80 million in the new fiscal year. On the bright side since the new fiscal year will not begin until after June 30^th the county does have some time to work with their plans.

The CFO of the county, Ed Corser, told the Board of Supervisors the following about the changes that need to be made to the budget in order for the county to remain solvent while delivering a report, “We’ve tried hard, but revenue keeps dropping. If you want to make sure the budget is balanced structurally … we’ll either end up balancing with one-time money, or play hardball and say it’s going to happen this year (with austerity measures).” Along with layoffs Mr. Corser is looking to make across the board cuts to the budget for the county.

Along with the help of the County Executive Officer ,Larry Parrish, Mr. Corser  outlined a plan to cut back the deficit that relies on cutback the budgets of non-public-safety departments by a whopping 28% while those departments that do have to do with public safety will only have their budgets cut by a much more modest 3%. Though this plan, along with some serious attrition cuts, savings from employee pensions and other cuts will not get the job done completely. When all is said and done the cuts will take then $80 million budget hole and turn it into a $10 million dollar budget hole. This plan requires about 180 jobs to be cut in order to make this plan work.

As Mr. Corser told a reporter for My Desert the following about the smaller hole that would be left in the county budget, “That’s spitting distance to balance this budget next year.”

Of course they are not the only county to make staffing cuts in order to keep their budget in balance.  Some of you may recall our recent coverage of the job cuts in Luzerne County. For those of you who did not here is an excerpt of our earlier coverage:

“Now, it looks like as we get closer to the Feb 15^th deadline, when the budget must be approved or the jobs have to be cut, things are taking a turn for the worse for the workers in Luzerne County as a higher number of job cuts are being talked about in order to make end meet.  In addition the county may also have to give it residents another tax increase in order to make ends meet.

The numbers, which were looking to go as low at 56 layoffs now seem to have settled at about 70 jobs lost and while this is still lower than the initial estimate for more than 100 jobs being cut it is still a significant increase. This number of cuts will include revenues found by approving the tax increase of about two percent for every county resident.”