How else to describe the ability to “cut” 256 positions, many of them vacant, and “save” millions of dollars?
Those must be dollars and positions the county does not need — never needed — and yet held the slots open in budgets year after year. That sounds like fraud to me, representing that money is being used for one purpose when in reality Mecklenburg County officials are keeping the “extra” money as a ready reserve in case revenue projections crash, as they have.
No wonder county officials have resisted performance contracting and other innovative measures that would squeeze out waste instead of floating it along in the form of a slush fund. That the county could magically come up with almost $40m. it does not need suggests we need serious reform in the way the county does business.
Update: News14 reports different, and I suspect, more accurate numbers. Some 334 full-time positions would be cut from next year’s budget, 245 of which are already vacant. There should be a criminal investigation into this.
