[For clarity, I have altered the closing paragraph.]
Remember that number. It’s the full-time equivalent employees funded with state money who received some sort of severance as a result of budget cuts from the current session of the General Assembly.
The news was delivered by David Brown of the Office of State Budget and Management at a meeting of the Joint Appropriations/Base Budget Committee this morning. Brown said the 1,629 figure reflected the number of workers who received either a separation package or (in the case of K-12 teachers and Local Education Administration employees) payment to cover their medical insurance.
A PDF of the report is available here.
That’s right. 1,629. Not 20,000 or 30,000, as Gov. Bev Perdue and other Democrats (and liberal advocacy groups) claimed.
To be sure, Brown said the number will go up somewhat as a result of the consolidation of the Department of Public Safety — a project Perdue backs.
But tens of thousands of state jobs were not lost employees did not lose their jobs. Remember that. (And Carolina Journal will have more later.)
