Filling state job vacancies

At Tuesday’s meeting of the Legislature’s Interim Finance Committee, state Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, asked Budget Director Jeff Mohlenkamp why state government is not filling 2,500 vacant jobs when Nevada has 140,000 people looking for work.

“This is contributing to joblessness and impacting our services to our constituents,” said Sen. Horsford, who pointed out that Nevada still leads the nation with a 12 percent official unemployment rate. “The governor put out a goal to create 50,000 jobs by 2014. You would think some of these unemployed people would be qualified for these positions.”

Sen. Horsford asked Mr. Mohlenkamp to report to the committee in June on the steps he has taken to reduce the state’s job vacancy rate.

Department of Administration officials confirmed late Tuesday there were 2,499 state government vacancies as of April 1, but explained that nearly 1,000 of those were for seasonal, temporary, intermittent or special forestry jobs. Leslie Henrie, spokeswoman for the department, said there are 1,564 vacancies in permanent, full-time-equivalent jobs.

That’s an 11.55 percent state vacancy rate out of a permanent authorized workforce of 16,723 people (which does not include public school teachers or higher education employees). But Ms. Henrie noted the vacancy rate is not much different from those of previous years. On April 1, 2008, the rate was 12.55 percent; last year it was 12.15 percent.

If state agencies routinely hoard that many vacant positions, it may mean they’re routinely seeking authorization for more employees than they actually need. They could be doing this to make themselves look frugal, to avoid having go back to the Legislature when they do choose to make a hire, and also to accrue funds they can use for other purposes.

In fact, state Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, (who happens to be running against Sen. Horsford for the state’s new 4th Congressional District seat) pointed out Tuesday that state departments routinely seek funding for new employees – but then turn around and use the money for other purposes. For instance, state Welfare and Supportive Services officials got $600,000 last year, supposedly to hire new workers – but Tuesday asked the committee’s permission to use that money to instead buy 371 new computers.

In addition, contrary to Sen. Horsford’s implication, the state workforce should not be seen as a “jobs” program. When Gov. Brian Sandoval stated the goal of creating 50,000 new jobs, he surely envisioned the vast majority of those positions being created in the private sector.

It would be easy enough for government to hire 50,000 more people, if cost were no object. But in fact, funding for those jobs would have to be extracted from private-sector taxpayers. Money transferred from the private to the government sector doesn’t really “create” a job – it merely means taxpaying businesses are giving up one or more of their own prospective new employees in order to fund a new state worker.