In its final quarterly report for Fiscal 2005, the Virginia Department of Transportation noted that the number of VDOT employees had declined from 10,001 employees to 9, 126 — even while improving performance on key metrics such as completing construction and maintenance jobs on time and on budget. (See the Virginian-Pilot article here.)
That’s an impressive performance — probably the most impressive performance of any state agency under the Warner administration. The increase in productivity and quality excels even in comparison to the private sector. Here’s my question: How does that compare to other state agencies? We don’t know. The reason we don’t know, I suspect, is that other agencies aren’t tracking their performance the same way. If they are, they aren’t talking about it. Otherwise, they surely would be trumpeting their achievements.
According to federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Virginia state government overall has been adding to payroll, not cutting it over the past year. Average state employment for the first four months of 2005 was 182,675, compared to 181,650 the year before. Remember, those aggregate numbers include VDOT’s cuts of nearly 900 employees, implying a growth of nearly 2,000 employees for non-VDOT agencies. (Disclaimer: These numbers are not authoritative. The BLS does not classify jobs the same way the state does. But the figure do indicate a trend.)
Conclusion: State agencies aren’t exactly on a hiring binge, but the era of budget-crisis parsimony appears to be over. For certain, taxpayers aren’t seeing the hoped-for gains in state enterprise productivity they have every right to expect.
