Let the cuts begin

Originally published June 23, 2008

Well, it's started.

With less than two weeks remaining before Florida's scaled-down 2008-09 budget takes effect, the Department of Corrections sent out 80 layoff notices to probation officers late last week. They're being offered jobs as correctional officers, which speaks well of DOC Secretary Walt McNeil and Gov. Charlie Crist's administration ? not to mention the influence of the Florida Police Benevolent Association, which represents the officers.

But, any way you look at it, this is not good.

There will probably be layoffs in many agencies as the new budget, which is some $6 billion less than the current fiscal year's original spending, takes full effect after July 1. The DOC actually got an increase, but not enough to keep pace with rising prison population and probation supervision.

Another 132 office positions and 216 jobs of program workers, like chaplains and teachers, are next to go at DOC.

Sure, some readers will click the "Comment" line on our Web site and post derisive little messages about how it's high time all those lazy, overstaffed state agencies start feeling the economic pain that the rest of us have endured for the last few years. But governments at all levels have been coping with the same economic factors afflicting everybody else.

Anyone in the newspaper business can certainly empathize with state workers in this budget year. The Miami Herald just cut 250 positions, including one of Tallahassee's best reporters, and the Chicago Tribune Co. ( Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun-Sentinel ) is making another round of staff cuts.

I know the feeling. In 1985, I'd worked more than 18 years for United Press International when they called us up early one payday and said not to deposit our checks because they'd bounce. (Actually, to save long-distance costs, UPI phoned one employee in each bureau and had him or her call the rest.)

At age 41, with a kid on the way, I started looking for a job. I was lucky. The Tallahassee Democrat threw me a line, and I've rarely had a bad day at the office in 23 years.

In government or the private sector, this economy is like one of those bad 1950s horror movies. "Resistance is futile!" the evil genius would cackle, as his death ray wiped out another city block. Nobody likes it, but cursing our prevailing fiscal mess is like being opposed gravity ? we weren't consulted, and there's nothing to do about it.

But you don't have to be a criminologist or have a business-management degree to see why cutting probation officers is like eating our seed corn. The Legislature left no choice, but this runs directly counter to what McNeil was saying just last week at that big "re-entry" conference he and Crist addressed, dealing with strategies to rehabilitate prisoners and get them back into productive lives.

And by offering probation officers jobs as correctional officers, the state is doing more of precisely what it needs to do less of ? the warehousing of inmates, which McNeil spoke out against last week.

This means higher case loads for the remaining probation officers. That means less time going out to verify whether probationers live where they say they're staying, have jobs and are at least trying to change.

It means judges will pack more offenders off to prison ? correctly deciding that putting them on probation is tantamount to letting them off with a not-credible warning. So the ignorant, swaggering street thug who might ? just might ? learn something from having to report to a no-nonsense probation officer will, instead, be doing hard time at a cost of what, almost $20,000 a year?

A lot of probationers, maybe most of them, will wind up in prison on a second or third offense anyway. But now, we taxpayers will get to start supporting them sooner, and for longer, while making the long shot of rehabilitation even less realistic.

And then there's the disruption of the probation employees' lives. Every one of those 80 layoffs represents a person, a family, and most of them will never be the same.

The probation officers are pretty tough folks, and most of them are probably capable of working in the prisons. But it's likely that, for any number of reasons, a lot of them won't make the switch. They have roots in their communities, their spouses have jobs, maybe they don't like where a new job is offered or maybe they can get another job where they are.

So the state loses a good probation officer, another officer's case load gets heavier, some probationers get a little less scrutiny and more felons who might be on probation wind up languishing in durance vile. No sympathy for them, but is this the best use of our resources? Maybe some laid-off officers will be out of work for a while. Unemployment benefits, Medicaid and food stamps will replace self-sustaining paychecks. Cars they might have bought, family vacations they might have taken and other consumer spending that might have stimulated the economy will be delayed. Maybe a few of their homes will come on the already clogged real-estate market.

Consider the effects of always cutting budgets, never looking at new revenues, and the Republicans seem to be sowing the seeds of their own demise. The State University System, for just one example, is reducing admissions and raising tuitions. Amendment 1 is ricocheting through local governments.

And now the probation system will provide less supervision of offenders, meaning more crime, more marginally salvageable punks sent to prison.

Nobody wants higher taxes. But the average voter is going to feel the pain of these service cuts long after the momentary satisfaction of a no-new-taxes budget is forgotten.