CHARLESTON, W.Va. — State Commerce Secretary Keith Burdette tells MetroNews the entire state Division of Forestry will be out of money by next February if the state Personnel Board doesn’t approve a plan to layoff 37 workers.
The board tabled the plan impacting state foresters during a meeting last week. Burdette will personally make the request again at a board meeting scheduled for next Tuesday in Charleston.
“We don’t have other viable options,” Burdette said Wednesday.
The Tomblin administration and lawmakers have been into some finger pointing over the layoff plan after the new state budget cut funding for the Division of Forestry by $1.3 million. Lawmakers passed a bill, signed into law by the governor back in February, that cuts a special severance tax on timber. The governor wanted the tax, which has helped pay down the old workers’ compensation debt, to stay at its current rate but the approved bill reduced it.
Burdette said he can’t continue to pay workers without the money to pay them and that shouldn’t surprise lawmakers.
“They have to know when you cut 35 percent of a division’s operating budget, of which personnel costs are probably 80 percent of the operating budget, that’s going to result in people losing their jobs,” Burdette said.
Burdette and staff have looked at other scenarios on how the $1.3 million could be achieved but those options fall short of the layoff plan.
“We could cut every worker in the division down to three days a week but that’s no way to run an agency,” Burdette said.
The layoff would represent about one-third of the agency’s personnel.
Some leading lawmakers have said no one spoke with them directly about the number of possible layoffs in connection with the funding cut. Burdette called that reaction “dishonest.”
Burdette said specific numbers weren’t available until just before the announcement was made but he contends lawmakers were told “over and over” about job cuts. He said he made a final call to the House Finance Committee the Friday before the final budget was passed in the special session to tell the committee about the cuts. He spoke with a budget analyst, he said.
Burdette added Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin told the West Virginia Forestry Association that if it continued to lobby for a tax cut it would cost jobs.
“Do I like this option? Does anybody like it? No, we abhor it,” Burdette said. “But I can only spend what the legislature gives me.”
All 37 foresters on the layoff list showed up at last week’s personnel board meeting warning of problems on timber jobs and fire suppression if their jobs are cut. The agency will have to “reprioritize,” Burdette said.
“We’ll have to reassign people…and we’ll probably focus most of our attention on fire suppression and prevention. We’ll do less work, that is vitally important, but we’ll have to make some decisions about the policing of logging activities. Those type of things we won’t be able to do,” Burdette said.
The agency hopes to get some help from the state Department of Environmental Protection in regulating logging jobs.
“You cannot pay people with smoke and mirrors,” Burdette said.
The Division of Forestry has closed regional offices and not filled vacancies in recent years to save money.
The personnel board meeting is scheduled for June 28 at 1:30 p.m. at the Capitol Room in the Building 7 Conference Center at the state capitol complex.