Union opposes agency consolidation bill, massive state employee cuts

Oct. 14, 2009 - OCSEA this week expressed strong opposition to Senate Bill 52, a legislative plan to restructure the existing 20-plus cabinet agencies into 10 and eliminate up to 11,000 state employees. 

OCSEA President Eddie L. Parks wrote a letter to the State and Local Government and Veterans' Affairs committee to express opposition and urge the Ohio Senate to kill the bill. A similar proposal was floated in 2004 by former gubernatorial candidate Jim Petro, who previously served as Ohio State Auditor and Ohio Attorney General, before it was stopped.

"Our opposition to SB 52 is based on numerous factors that we have experienced first-hand as well as other observations about the administration of government," wrote Parks in the Oct. 13 letter to the committee.  

Union leaders cite major flaws with the proposal, including:

• The economy and its resulting impact on state government already substantially has reduced the size of state government and eliminated 4,500 state employee positions since January 2007.

• Organizational consolidation as a strategy to meet operational and financial goals is significantly flawed as evidenced by a 70 percent failure rate among corporate mergers. In addition, the consolidation proposal does not offer any supporting analysis of projected savings or a blueprint for how results would be achieved.

• The 2000 merger between the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services and the Department of Human Services to form the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, for example, did not meet expectations and Ohio should learn from these lessons. 

• There are other proven strategies−such as a labor-management process improvement initiative that saved Ohio more than $350 billion over several years−that could be used to achieve the goal of cost effective government. 

For more details about why OCSEA opposes SB 52, read Parks’ entire letter to the committee.

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Union opposes agency consolidation bill, massive state employee cuts

Pres. Parks’ letter to the committee

Legislative Watch on SB 52