Furlough No Go

I don’t like furloughs. They are the managerial equivalent of  Blunt Force Trauma: a clumsy, ham-fisted way to impose financial austerity. It’s an open admission that there are no other viable solutions on the table – no revenues to raise, no new consolidations or re-organization to consider, no innovative ways to achieve the same ends. A furlough is the end of imagination: close your doors, keep all your employees and home without pay, and hope you don’t create too much disruption to your business during the time you’re closed. The people who suffer the most are employees: faced with an immediate 20% cut in income, they must bear the brunt of furloughs most heavily. As citizens, we hope that their days on the job can be as productive, but know that low morale among employees who must be constantly thinking, “How do I pay my bills? How do I support my family?” will inevitable sap efficiency and productivity.

And yet, sometimes a furlough IS necessary. Sometimes it IS one of the few remaining instruments available to achieve some kind of economy. It’s kind of like performing surgery with a Leatherman tool: yeah, you can do it, but you’d really, really like to avoid it until the last possible instant.

Well, here we are in Trenton, joining the likes of the State of California and the City of Newark in introducing our furlough plan. A little late in the budget year to achieve any real savings for the fiscal year budget – savings from this effort are only projected to contribute only $1.4 Million toward reducing the current deficit most recently projected at $18.5 Million. Small change, given the magnitude of the deficit we face and the massive impact on the personal lives of city employees losing a fifth of their income. But it is, sadly, in all likelihood, something the city needs to do.

But, the city does need to go about it in a better way than it has been so far presenting. First off, the city doesn’t like the word “furlough,” preferring “temporary layoff,” as used in the press release issued last week to announce the move. To me, “temporary layoff,” doesn’t quite work. A temporary layoff says to me, “Empty out your desk and take all your belongings home, We’re closing the factory for two months and are laying you off until then.” Doing this one day at a time doesn’t sound right.

What to call it, then? Well, announcing these layoffs only one short day after Lauren Ira’s column about Trenton’s “momentum” and “rebirth” must have been a little embarrassing. But the use of the physical image of “rebirth” suggests another metaphor.

If Mayor Mack and Ms. Ira are assisting in Trenton’s “rebirth,” then these planned weekly furloughs are more like  “Temporary Induced Comas.”

These “Coma Days” will close down city government, excepting the emergency services of Police and Fire, and leave us on our own. An extreme measure, and one that would have been better off being implemented much earlier in our budget year when perhaps more Coma Days spread further apart could have saved more money than what we are likely to see. But, it’s too late for that for this year, I suppose. We have to face this pain, sadly, because of the Mack Administration’s failure to plan ahead.

There is one other aspect of these Temporary Comas I would like to address. Trenton Water Works  employees  are apparently included in these plans, with Friday closings of some TWW facilities also on the calendar.

This is a bad idea, for multiple reasons. Half of TWW’s customers are outside the City of Trenton. They will see these weekly disruptions as something that should not impact them. They will wonder why the City’s budget problems should affect the services for which they pay, not taxes, but Customer Fees. They will complain that they TWW should be exempted from actions that affect the City of Trenton. They will see this as one more in a long line of incidents and occasions over the last several months when the City of Trenton’s continued ownership and operation of TWW will not be in the interests of the suburban Townships.

And, you know what, they will be right! Mayor Mack has no right to impose these comas on TWW employees. They serve the suburban customers as much as they serve the City’s. And Trenton will lose even more money as a result of this. The City by law is able to transfer a surplus of TWW revenues to the general city budget. That annual tranfer is calculated as percentage of the TWW’s operational expenses. If, as a result of the Coma Days, operational expenses decline, SO WILL THE AMOUNT OF MONEY THE CITY OF TRENTON CAN EARN FROM THE WATER WORKS!

So, does it make sense to include TWW in this? If it is included in the plan of weekly closings, this is likely to increase the calls from folks such as Hamilton Mayor Bencivengo for a State Takeover of the Water Works. If we want to keep the Water Utility in city hands, we must show that we can restore its reputation as a well-managed, boringly dependable public utility providing uninterrupted quality service to its customers around Mercer County.

To further bind the reputation of the Water Works to the City of Trenton is to doom its future as the “Trenton” Water Works, as surely as anything. TWW needs to join the Police Department and Fire Department as a service too valuable to disrupt.