New policy could eliminate hundreds of Pima County government jobs

The policy, which will go into effect with the start of next fiscal year, will place deadlines on how long a position can remain vacant before it’s removed from county budgets.

There are currently over 7,400 jobs across all Pima County departments. As of Tuesday, 1,006, or nearly 14% of all positions, are unfilled, according to a memorandum by Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher. 

The new policy could eventually result in cutting nearly $8 million from payrolls.  

While its vacancy rate is slightly lower than in previous years, the county continues struggling to fill positions, not only across departments, but within specialized areas.

On Thursday, Lesher told the Arizona Daily Star that this policy is supposed to act as both a carrot — trimming fat in budgets allows for more-efficient departments and less money spent — as well as a stick — because if departments have positions remaining vacant for months, maybe they don’t need those extra dollars allocated to them fiscal year after fiscal year.

Vacancies range, for example, from seven additional law clerks in the County Attorney’s Office; to four HVAC specialists; to another locksmith, as the county now employs just one. These positions, and many others, have remained unfilled for more than eight months.

“(Vacancies) tell me, do we need to do a better job recruiting? Are we paying enough? You know, what is the atmosphere in that department, etcetera,” Lesher said. “There are things that I look at from just an accounting perspective when I see an opening.

“The other side of that coin is we look at position. If you had a position open for well over a year, is it because it’s hard to fill, or are you really running the department without that position, and can we eliminate it and move forward?” she said. 

County supervisors approved the policy change by a vote of 4-0, and starting July 1, these vacancies will begin facing deadlines. If left unfilled, they will enter into a process that will eliminate them from future payrolls.

Supervisor Rex Scott, who submitted the policy for a vote, said motivation to address the county’s “chronic” vacancy rate began in 2022, when the county passed a policy that amended its guidelines for maintaining its general fund’s reserve balance.

“That was (our) first crack, if you will, at dealing with the fact that under our board, and the previous board, the county has historically had 900 to 1,000 vacant positions,” Scott said Friday. “To me, if we’ve got that many vacant positions (and) all of these departments are still managing to provide the services that county residents depend upon from them, it raises the logical question: Do we need all of these positions?”

“And then, I think, also just making sure that departments, whether they are run by appointed director or elected officials, are operating in as lean and efficient a way as possible,” Scott told the Star. 

Along with the reduction in county vacancies, Scott said that he hopes this policy will identify hard-to-fill positions and cause officials to take a deeper look into how they classify and compensate their workforce.

Supervisor Matt Heinz abstained from voting, saying in a message to the Star he didn’t feel “the policy was ready for prime time.”

Heinz’s point on Tuesday was that, if a department head is finally able to fill a position that’s been vacant for some time, it would take too long to go through an appeal to halt the position’s elimination. 

“If I’m the county attorney or (the medical examiner) …. If I finally get someone after 23 months, looking for this particular type of pathologist, and they’re like, ‘yeah, I have six other offers, I’d rather (be hired by) Pima County but I need to know tomorrow,’” Heinz said. “It’s like, ‘yeah in two weeks we’re going to get through the administrative appeals, and we’ll probably totally be able to maybe hire you.'”

“No man, 40 hours later they’re gone. That’s why they’re hard to get,” Heinz said of potential employees. “It feels like we might be kind of imperiling our ability to get some of these people if we have a nibble …. We need to enable these folks to have the agility and dexterity to grab onto whoever is saying yes to these hard-to-fill positions and not mess around. Even three or four days is too long.”

Lesher responded during the meeting that the procedures were not meant to create a “bureaucratic process” which blocks the county’s ability to hire candidates for hard-to-fill positions.

Supervisor Sylvia Lee raised questions about the county’s ability to compete locally, as she presented a salary comparison done by her staff.

While Pima County just spent nearly $10 million to boost salaries, Lee seemed unconvinced it has caught up, and said further review may be necessary so it can be more competitive against employers such as the city of Tucson, the University of Arizona or Maricopa County.

“Maybe we’re not paying enough, even though we’ve done a comp-class study, (maybe) we need to relook at that and take a look at these very hard-to-fill positions,” Lee said on Tuesday. “Perhaps we need to relook at the number the of ranges because they are hard to fill.”

Supervisor Steve Christy’s main question was that, if it’s so hard to get people hired on for certain county positions, such as within trades, then why doesn’t the county look to contract that work to private entities? Lesher, in response, said the county would begin to look at those options for the future.

According to Lesher’s April 11 memo, 601 of the 1,006 vacant positions are budgeted for within the county’s general fund.

Across all departments, at least 196 of those positions have been vacant for at least 240 days, according to Lesher’s memorandum. 

Beginning on July 1, “all positions that have been vacant for more than 240 days will be eliminated” on the first day of each fiscal quarter, being Oct. 1, Jan. 1, April 1 and July 1, according to the policy. This is consistent for both county- and grant-funded positions.

In total, 121 of the vacancies were not budgeted for this fiscal year because they already had been vacant for at least a year at the time of approving this year’s budget. These don’t have an impact on county dollars currently. However, the county has more than $8.6 million from this year’s budgets “tied up in positions that have been vacant for more than 8 months,” or about 240 days, Lesher wrote.

For county-funded positions, dollars saved from the elimination will become reserves within the respective budget it was funded by, meaning the county would be saving money immediately with a position’s elimination, Lesher said.

Savings from grant-funded positions that are eliminated may be reallocated, but it will depend on the grant’s regulations or “written funder approval,” and grant-funded positions will be eliminated “as soon as the grant expires.” Those who are currently in those positions “may be laid-off” in accordance with county regulations, the policy procedures say.

“Sometimes there is a desire for people to keep a position open and see if they could find other grants funding for it or something like that,” Lesher said. “If somebody’s been working for us on a grant for five years, I would hope that their knowledge and county experience will put them in a unique position to qualify for another position, but that does not mean that they just automatically stay on the county payroll if there’s no funding stream.” 

Base budgets for the following fiscal year will be reduced by the positions eliminated during the previous quarters, the policies say. This means that, although the budget that will be approved this summer won’t be impacted by any cuts, a highest-job-cut scenario in following fiscal quarters could be the elimination of up to $8 million worth of positions.