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Sen. Scott Wagner, R-York County, (left) and Gov. Tom Wolf and his administration have exchanged some barbs over the looming layoffs at the state Department of Labor and Industry that deserve a closer look.
(File photos/PennLive.com)
Hoping to shed some light on some of the barbs that have been exchanged over the scheduled layoffs of 521 state Department of Labor & Industry employees between Gov. Tom Wolf and Senate Republicans, particularly Sen. Scott Wagner, PennLive takes a look at some of the claims and counter-claims.
STATEMENT: Gov. Tom Wolf accuses the Senate Republicans of going back on a promise to run legislation that would have authorized $57.5 million for another year's operation of the state's unemployment compensation system in the Department of Labor & Industry prior to the Nov. 30 legislative session ending.
RESPONSE: Senate Republicans say they committed to work on the unemployment compensation issue on a scheduled post-election session day and knew this was important to the Wolf administration. But when the administration failed to provide answers to questions that senators raised about how the money would be used and how the department would wean the unemployment compensation system off the need for extra funding, the GOP caucus elected to do nothing.
STATEMENT: Sen. Scott Wagner, R-York County, who has been the most vocal critic of this action by the governor, says what's interesting to him is that the three call centers to be closed in Altoona, Allentown and Lancaster are in senatorial districts represented by Republicans.
RESPONSE: That's true. Actually, four of the seven service centers were located in GOP-represented senatorial district through Nov. 30. But as a result of the November election, that number grew to five.
Nonethless, L&I spokeswoman Sara Goulet says point-blank that politics had nothing to do with the decisions about which centers to close. In a letter Wolf sent to Senate GOP leaders, he says those decisions were "based on a series of variables, including performance, capacity, efficiency, and ability of the centers to handle increased call volume." Information quantifying productivity and efficiency that PennLive requested from L&I has yet to be provided.
STATEMENT: Wagner insists the governor has discretionary money, which he called "Ledger 5 account funds," which he could have used to keep the furloughed employees on the payroll until the first of the year.
RESPONSE: Wolf spokesman Jeff Sheridan says there is no such fund. A Ledger 5 account is an accounting mechanism. To explain, he offered up this example. He said when the House Democratic Caucus borrowed money from the state Treasury to pay salaries during the 2015-16 budget impasse, the budget office used a Ledger 5 account to track the money that the caucus borrowed to balance the books later.
STATEMENT: It has been suggested by Wagner's staff and others that workers who received furlough notices were hired as temporary help to assist with the uptick in unemployment compensation claims as a result of the 2008 recession.
RESPONSE: Only 55 of the 521 being furloughed were considered as itinerant staffers who were brought in on an as-needed basis during busy times, Goulet says.
STATEMENT: Wagner calls the way the Wolf Administration handled the furloughs by telling people in regional offices via videoconference - instead of in person with boxes of tissues sitting around - as inhuman and immoral.
RESPONSE: The governor and the labor secretary say they felt it was important for the affected employees to hear the news directly from them and all at the same time, administration officials say. So they chose to deliver it to the employees in Harrisburg in person and broadcast the session to the regional offices. A human resources officer was on hand at each location, officials say.