Local government officials around Tallahassee are anxious about a wave of state-worker layoffs set to hit later this week, but they are attempting to create their smooth transition to the private sector.
About 600 state and local government workers in the tri-county area surrounding the state capital -- Leon, Gadsden and Wakulla counties -- are poised to lose their jobs this week, 400 in the city of Tallahassee alone.
The layoffs are part of the 4,457 state government positions cut as part of the 2011-2012 fiscal budget passed by lawmakers and signed by Gov. Rick Scott, which takes effect Friday. According to the state Department of Management Services, about 1,600 of those positions are currently filled. DMS spokesperson Kristopher Purcell said that most of those workers, whose last day is Thursday, have already been notified.
The cutbacks helped lawmakers fill Floridas $3.8 billion budget shortfall, but will likely have a severe impact in Tallahassee, where much of the work force is employed by the state government.
With job cuts looming, local government officials are hoping to create private-sector jobs to offset the losses.
We will hopefully, over the next 12-to-18 months, be able to create enough jobs to replace the 400 that were going to lose in the city of Tallahassee, said Tallahassee Mayor John Marks.
Marks and other local elected officials banded together with local business groups and work-force transition companies to help laid-off government workers find new jobs, creating a new website -- bigbendworks.com -- to help in the effort.
The website contains links for retraining, new job leads, counseling, financial and career planning, and assistance for basic needs like food and housing.
Its a one-stop shop, said Kimberly Moore, CEO of Workforce Plus, a local job training and career center company, and one of the backers of the new website. So basically anything the person would need to retool and get their lives back together would be on one site, she added.
The new site is also backed by Tallahassee Community College, which first initiated talks to help displaced government workers, and the Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce, which is leery of the economic impact of the layoffs.
We want to do our part to ensure a vibrant business sector in the region and help our state employees get back to work as quickly as possible, said Sue Dick, president of the Tallahassee Chamber.
But whether a burgeoning local private-sector business and jobs climate -- with jobs matching their skill sets -- will be waiting for the state workers losing their jobs next week remains to be seen. Moore says that Workforce Plus is seeing 10 new job openings each week, and 300 local state workers are engaging her outfit to help find a new job.
The key question on that is whether the jobs that we create can match the jobs of the individuals who are losing their jobs in state government, Marks said, adding that the Tallahassee area is focusing on transportation and hospital industry sectors to help in the job-creation effort.
Some state workers, however, are already landing softly. About 500 of the 1,600 state employees being laid off are being moved to other positions within their state agency or within state government.
"Their human resource folks are looking to place folks in some of those other positions," Purcell said.
Reach Gray Rohrer at grohrer@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
