STATE PLANS 40 TO 50 LAW ENFORCEMENT LAYOFFS

TALLAHASSEE - The head of the Florida Department
of Law Enforcement said Tuesday budget
belt-tightening will force 40 to 50 layoffs and
make the state pull out all but the biggest drug investigations.

FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey said he is
meeting with sheriffs and police chiefs to see
what they are most willing to give up. He told
Gov. Charlie Crist and the Cabinet that the
department's most sought-after services, like DNA
laboratory work and fingerprint checks, will not
be scaled back but that some extremely difficult choices are ahead.

Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson, a
certified law-enforcement officer, told Bailey
that his own inspectors and firefighters are also
feeling the pinch of the state's sluggish
economy. Bronson said promises to "hold harmless"
law enforcement never survive big budget cuts.

Crist recently ordered agencies to impound 4
percent of their operating budgets in
anticipation of state revenue collections falling
below the already-gloomy projections on which the
Legislature based the state budget. State
economists have another revenue-estimating
conference set for Friday to revise their forecasts.

"There are no decisions I can make there that I
will be roundly applauded for," Bailey said at a Cabinet meeting.

He said FDLE has already cut 56 jobs, frozen
hiring on 134 vacancies and halted internal
promotions. He said he had a meeting set with
Sen. Victor Crist, R-Temple Terrace, chairman of
the Senate Criminal Justice Appropriations
committee, to go over revenue expectations and policy options.

"Even with freezing these positions, when we cut
the 4 percent that's coming, I'm looking -
depending on the level of positions - at
somewhere between 40 and 50 live bodies," Bailey
said. "I think we've taken care of the fat
already, with those 56 that were cut earlier, in
fact we got into some muscle with that one."
Bronson said his agency is "right at the breaking
point" in staffing 23 agriculture inspection
stations. He said the state is losing 25 percent
of its fire fighters to local governments every
two years, at a training cost of about $77,000 per employee.

"It's going to be tough and I know this budget
year won't be much better than last," he said. "I
know that saying 'hold 'em harmless' sounds good
but I don't think we ever get a chance to hold
them harmless when something has to go."