Task force to exhaust options before touching personnel
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 20, 2012
The Spending Cuts Task Force met for the first time yesterday. The members defined the service priorities of the government involving education, health care, safety, administration of the government, and economic development. They also put employee benefits on the table to consider for elimination or reduction.
Most importantly, the task force adopted a process to go into each agency to examine the delivery of all services, then streamline costs and processes, consolidate, outsource, and improve productivity.
Agency-by-agency review & recommendations for savings & improvement
Governor’s Chief Economic Advisor Henry Taitano, Jr. will be leading a ‘Greenbelt Team’ into each government agency beginning next week. This will be a small team of five to eight people from government and the private sector who are not intimately involved with the operations of any agency. This team will observe and examine the delivery of each service and program. The team, using a scientifically-proven method called DMAIC (used successfully by Fortune 100 companies), will measure and analyze inefficiencies, redundancies, dead time, excessive processes, and anything that slows down the process of delivering a service. The team will then prepare the plan to cut out these impediments either through consolidations, outsourcing, reductions, and implementation of technology.
Displacement programs
All acknowledged that it will be impossible to cut $43 million without affecting personnel. This DMAIC process may result in reductions. The task force addressed this by preparing for an early-out incentive program and special training programs for displaced workers. Task force chairman and Chief Fiscal Advisor Bernadette Artero assigned Director of Administration Benita Manglona to prepare the early out program by May 15. Chief Education Advisor Vince Leon Guerrero, GCC President Dr. Mary Okada, UOG Vice President David O’Brien, and AHRD Director Alfredo Antolin, Jr. will prepare the training programs by May 15 as well.
Benefits
The task force, which met in public and received ideas from the public yesterday, is inviting discussion from GovGuam employees and the public. The task force placed on the table a list of employee benefits and other benefits the taxpayers pay for to consider for elimination or reduction. This does not mean that what is listed below will be eliminated. It is simply up for consideration. The list follows:
- · Annual leave lump sum payouts
- · Leave sharing
- · Non-productive leave requirement (GFD)
- · Nurses’ time-and-a-half on weekends
- · Nurses’ 8hrs. + overtime policy
- · Incentive pay (DYA & GFD)
- · DOC 10% extra pay
- · Hazardous pay
- · Night differential at 24-hr. operations
- · Annual COLA for off island non-residents
- · Benefits package for MIP
- · Health insurance benefits
- · Paternity leave
- · Outstanding pay (3.5%)
- · Idea: Move all DC members to Social Security and to 457 plan
- · Idea: Move retiree health insurance to Medicare (A,B & D) + supplemental for dental
- · Idea: Change age of retirement to 65
- · Idea: Eliminate non-based pay in consideration of three highest years
- · Idea: Revert the survivor annuity rate from 60% back to 50%
- · Idea: Implement use-it-or-lose-it leave benefits policy
Public input
A team will examine each of these ideas, then make recommendations to the task force next week. The team will be soliciting input from those affected over the next few days. Residents are welcome to provide feedback and their own ideas by emailing them to task force co-chairman and Deputy Chief of Staff Rose Ramsey at rose.ramsey@guam.gov. Residents can also post their comments to the Governor’s Facebook site, search phrase: Office of the Governor of Guam.
Priority services
Certain services the government provides were listed as its critical and most important services. This does not mean that the programs running these services should not be changed. There was agreement that the way some of these services are provided should be changed to make them better, more efficient, and more cost-effective. The purpose of this list was to provide clear guidance on the priority areas where resources are to be spent. This is a critical first step as the task force decides what the limited resources given by the taxpayers should be spent on, and what services can be sacrificed so the priority areas are properly funded. The list of critical services is not final. Public input again is welcome in the assembly of this list. It is attached for your review.
UNSWORN DECLARATION: I hereby declare that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of myknowledge and belief, under penalty of perjury of the laws of Guam, this declaration being sworn and made in lieu of an affidavit pursuant to Title 6 Guam Code Annotated §4308, at the place and date identified herein.
Troy Torres
Director of Communications