CDCR Sends Layoff Letters to 1,443 Employees

Written By: Circle Tree Ranch Date: October 2nd, 2009. Topic: Member Blogs.

Follows last week’s announcement to Reduce Rehabilitation Budget

The CDCR sent State Restriction of Appointments (SROA) letters on Sept. 23 to employees affected by a $250 million budget reduction in adult offender rehabilitation and other programs for inmates and parolees that were announced last week.

This is the first step in the layoff process due to reductions in response to the department’s plan to achieve a $1.2 billion budget reduction.

The rehabilitation program reductions will impact education, vocational, substance abuse, and other programs for inmates and parolees. This reduction represents over a third of the adult programs budget, and leaves approximately $350 million in the adult programs budget.

Overall, program-related reductions are anticipated to eliminate more than 1,000 positions, but because of existing vacancies, the number of actual layoffs is expected to be somewhere between 600 and 900, depending upon final labor negotiations. More SROA letters must be sent than the actual number of anticipated layoffs due to the complexities of the civil service layoff process.

Last week, termination letters were sent to eight contractors who provide substance abuse services inside the state’s prisons. These terminations affect 24 individual contracts.

CDCR is developing a streamlined rehabilitation model that is designed to reach as many offenders as possible with less funding. The department is working on strategies to shorten the length of in-prison substance abuse treatment, utilize long-term offenders as counselors and literacy tutors, develop alternative methods of delivering education, and increase community volunteer activities. The department is committed to attempt to minimize layoffs to the extent possible by reducing vacancies first.

Over the next few months, CDCR will be working with affected labor organizations to implement these changes. Final decisions regarding new program models will be pending those negotiations.

To see last week’s announcement and for more information on program reductions, please visit: http://intranet/focus_on.asp . For more information on the Layoff and SROA process please click here http://intranet/main/Layoff09.asp