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County slashes 26 JFS positions
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
YOUNGSTOWN
To balance Mahoning County’s public-assistance budget, the county commissioners unanimously authorized the abolition of 26 jobs in the income-maintenance section of the Department of Job and Family Services.
The job eliminations will take effect Aug. 27 and Sept. 3.
The job cuts, approved Thursday, are occurring because of a $1 million deficit in the fund used to pay the income-maintenance staff’s salaries, said Judee Genetin, JFS director.
The department has lost $6 million in combined federal and state funding since July 2007, she added.
Positions to be abolished are those of 21 members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 2001, four supervisors belonging to the United Auto Workers Union and one nonunion fiscal specialist.
JFS employs about 295 people in its income-maintenance and child-support-enforcement divisions combined. The job abolition does not affect the child-support-enforcement division.
Helen Youngblood, president of AFSCME Local 2001, told the commissioners the process of laying off the workers is fraught with “favoritism and nepotism.” She also alleged that high operating costs at Oakhill Renaissance Place, JFS’ home for the last three years, are a cause of the layoffs.
Genetin said the layoffs, however, are being done in reverse order of seniority in compliance with the union contracts and that JFS was able to reduce layoffs last year because it spent less than it expected for utilities, security and maintenance.
Where possible, JFS chose positions for abolishment that don’t directly affect client services, Genetin said.
“If anyone believes that this is the last round of cost reductions in many state functions, I think that’s probably foolish,” said county Administrator George J. Tablack.
“Our funding level is going down, and our client population is going up,” he added.
Three eligibility-referral -supervisor jobs and a training-supervisor job are being abolished in the UAW.
AFSCME positions being abolished are those of six case managers, three training officers, three income-maintenance-case-control reviewers, two word- processing specialists, two secretaries, an eligibility specialist, a contract evaluator, an investigator, an income-maintenance aide and a purchasing specialist.
In other action, the commissioners accepted $2.6 million in federal stimulus funds for a new high- efficiency boiler system to heat Oakhill. No local money is required.
Oakhill, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, is now heated by steam heat supplied by Youngstown Thermal LLC.