YOUNGSTOWN State government employees protest planned 6% budget cuts

The cuts would range from state prisons to local library service.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- State budget cuts and layoffs have the potential to cause great harm to the people of Ohio, state workers and their union leaders say.
About 20 people who work in state government in the Mahoning Valley and a state-supported library system and their union leaders rallied late Monday afternoon outside the George Voinovich Government Center to protest Gov. Bob Taft's plan for a 6 percent spending cut in most state agencies in the next two years.
"The job that we do is dangerous enough," said Ron Morton, AFSCME union assembly president at the Ohio State Penitentiary -- also known as the supermax prison -- on Youngstown's East Side. Morton added that major job cuts in such institutions would make conditions unsafe for prison workers and the community.
Morton, a corrections officer, said he fears staff there will be laid off in disproportionate numbers because it is a relatively new institution whose workers generally rank low in seniority.
"We make certain that these people are not back on the streets. We're the ones who have to be in the front lines in case they ever decide to act up," Alex G. Alexander, another corrections officer at OSP, said of the inmates.
Possible closings: The state will likely close two state prisons, and may close two or three psychiatric hospitals next year, said Dennis A. Falcione, OCSEA-AFSCME state representative, adding that his union may lose up to 1,100 jobs by layoff.
"We call on Gov. Taft and the state Legislature to find ways to balance the budget free of any further cuts in library and local government funding and free of any further cuts in any of the vital state services," said Louisa Berger, a librarian at the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.
Library cuts: The governor's proposal would cut state support for local public libraries between 6 percent and 10 percent, Berger said, adding that could mean up to $1.5 million a year in lost revenue for the Youngstown system. "In tough economic times, libraries are an essential service," she added.
Service Employees International Union District 1199 proposed in a news release that the state solve its budget crisis by returning corporate taxes to their 1998 level and closing loopholes, using Rainy Day funds, eliminating unbid contracts and participating in a multistate lottery.
Others represented in the rally were Bureau of Workers' Compensation staff and state mental health caseworkers.
Gov. Taft told Vindicator writers earlier this fall that the state must act now to close a projected $1.495 billion two-year budget shortfall.