Dear Editor,

I would like to take this opportunity to clearly articulate theposition of the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees/CWA,AFL-CIO, Local 3570 in regard to the governor’s proposed budget forstate fiscal year 2006.

MASE is opposed to the loss of any state employee’s job.However, if personnel cuts must be made, we insist they be done inaccordance with the established policies and procedures of theMississippi State Personnel Board.

The concept of job security for government employees is nothingnew and serves to preclude the politicization of the stateworkforce. Administrations change, but the business of governmentand services to the citizens must go on with continuity andstability.

The policies and procedures for strength reduction are in place,embodied in Mississippi code and work just fine. Thus, any cutsmandated by the Legislature for fiscal year 2006 can be madewithout revising the existing laws. Further, agencies will haveplenty of time to implement the cuts on July 1, 2005, if they getto work.

Agencies are required to perform an in-house analysis, and thefiring of employees for political and personal reasons is avoidedto a great extent.

The governor’s position that the existing SPB policies andprocedures are administratively burdensome and inefficient isnonsense. In their absence, the State Personnel Board itself may aswell be eliminated with a payroll savings of $2.5 million.

The governor has shrewdly shifted the requirement to fireworkers from himself to the agency heads and, of course, theMississippi Legislature. In turn, in the future, he can stand backand assume a “don’t blame me” position. “I didn’t fire anyone; theLegislature did it.”

Similarly, the existing policies and procedures of the SPB givethe Legislature a degree of protection from allegations ofcollusion with the intent of targeting individual employees.MASE/CWA urges the House of Representatives not to give thesenators championing the cause or the governor and his agency headsa “hunting license” to fire employees they don’t like or deemexpendable.

MASE/CWA and thousands of state employees look to theirlawmakers to hold the moral high ground and not break faith withstate employees.

Brenda R. Scott, president,

Mississippi Alliance of State Employees