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County Commissioner Criticizes Bean Over Job Cuts

Tribune file photo (2007)

Hillsborough county has about 9,000 employees, but funding to pay them has been rapidly dropping.

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By MIKE SALINERO | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 30, 2009

TAMPA - Hillsborough County Administrator Pat Bean's announcement Friday that she may have to lay off 1,000 workers drew fire from a county commissioner today who accused Bean of using people's jobs for political purposes.

Commissioner Al Higginbotham said he thinks Bean used the threat of layoffs to pressure Sheriff David Gee into making deeper budget cuts than he has in the past. The sheriff is a constitutional officer who controls his own budget and is not answerable to the county administrator.

Higginbotham said he has figures that show the sheriff's office budget growing at a slower rate, 16.3 percent, over the last four years, than the county budget overseen by Bean, which grew by 19.1 percent.

"I don't think it's a good tactic to use when planning a budget," Higginbotham said. "It appears it's being used as a bargaining tactic."

Higginbotham and some other commissioners said they were caught off guard Friday when Bean said she might have to cut 1,000 jobs over the next two years. Higginbotham questioned the validity of the number, saying the majority of job cuts announced in the last two years have been absorbed by eliminating frozen positions and moving people in positions eliminated to jobs in other departments.

County budget crunchers have predicted a financial shortfall of $110 million in the coming fiscal 2010 budget. But Bean said another $56 million may have to be cut two years from now because of the continuing slide in property and sales taxes.

In her comments Friday, Bean said she hoped the sheriff would do his part in reducing expenditures.
"The sheriff has cooperated to the extent of holding the line of not adding new positions," Bean said. "But he hasn't taken any reductions. We don't even ever get a detail to see what was in his budget."

Bean said she was not sure if Higginbotham's figures on the annual growth rate of the two budgets were correct. But she said the sheriff's budget is about $60 million more than the budget the county administrator oversees.

"It may be the percentage of my budget has gone up greater than the sheriff's but his budget is so much larger that ours," Bean said. "It could have gone up more than mine and looked less as a percentage."

Gee could not be reached for comment this morning.

Reporter Mike Salinero can be reached at (813) 259-8303.

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