I have three things to say about this.
Mayor John Whitmire
Houston Mayor John Whitmire is planning to implement a hiring freeze in the coming days that will impact all city departments except fire and police, a city spokesperson confirmed.
While an exact timeline has not been decided on, an official announcement from the mayor’s office is expected within a week, the spokesperson said. The mayor’s office said in a statement the freeze is an opportunity to cut expenses and find opportunities to make the city more efficient.
“The mayor believes a hiring freeze is an opportunity to cut expenses, ensuring that our personnel needs are reassessed to benefit the organization and taxpayers,” the statement read. “Houston has many great, hardworking employees, but the efficiency study indicated that there are too many for an organization the size of the city.”
See here for more on that efficiency study. On to the three things:
1. Honestly, I’m surprised there wasn’t already a hiring freeze in place.
2. That’s because as far as cutting costs go, personnel expenditures are by far the biggest part of the city’s operational budget. The way you cut costs is by cutting staff. There’s nothing magical about it.
3. See, for example, the 2010-2011 budget cycle, in which the city was faced with a significant deficit due to the 2008-09 economic downturn. With basically no other options, the city responded by laying off several hundred employees and leaving many then-vacant positions unfilled. We have some options to raise revenue now – we had a perfectly good option to raise the tax rate last year to cover storm damage expenses but didn’t use it – but the Mayor has been insistent on doing all this efficiency stuff first. I’m skeptical of how much it will actually save, but if there’s an underlying political strategy of playing all that out before (reluctantly) turning to the revenue-raising items, I get where that’s coming from. My point is, to whatever extent we’re committed to “efficiency” and cutting costs, all roads lead to reductions in staff. That’s always how this goes.
Meanwhile, we’re spending $400m on the World Cup and GOP 2028 Convention.