Councilmember Kathy Patterson
Budget Recommendations and Workforce Data
September 20, 2002

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Council of the District of Columbia
The John A. Wilson Building
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington D.C. 20004

MEMORANDUM

Following are mostly-complete recommendations for consideration in the Council's new budget package, and attached are items provided by the Chief Financial Officer earlier this year including: (1) April memo from me to Councilmembers with letter and data from the OCFO on total number of unencumbered positions in the workforce; (2) Also from the CFO, payroll runs from 1999 and 2002 indicating the growth in the number of persons earning $100,000 during the Williams Administration (from 330 to 553); (3) Another CFO payroll run indicating the breakout by DS levels of positions within the Executive Branch.

Budget recommendations:

This was recommended in the "alternative budget" several of us recommended in June. I recommend that parity be funded through alternative means including better management of existing personal services dollars. In April, at my request, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer analyzed the number of funded and unencumbered positions throughout the government, concluding that if all such positions were simply eliminated, the savings would amount to roughly $60 million (see attached memorandum).

2. Reduction in growth of middle and upper level management positions: $21.4 million.

OCFO analysis in March showed that the seven mayoral agencies then facing spending pressures also had added 224 additional positions at the level of DS 13 and above in the seven months between June 2001 and January 2002. This represents a 24% increase in such positions in less than a year. Major mayoral agencies including DOH, MPD-civilian, DHS, DMH, FEMScivilian, CFSA, DOC-civilian and DDOT/DPW reportedly have 1,073 positions DS 13 and above according to an OCFO analysis. Mandating a 25% reductions in such positions, to end and reverse the rapid growth in these positions, would yield $21.4 million in savings (assuming reducing 268 positions at a combined cost in salary and benefits of $80,000).

The proliferation of management consultants throughout the government hired to undertake responsibilities that, in most cases, should be performed by those already in the workforce is an issue the Council has raised repeatedly in recent years. According to data requested from the Office of Contracting and Procurement, there are now XX such contracts at an annual cost of $YY. Assuming the termination for the convenience of the government of just 50% of these contracts would save approximately $ZZ.

The OCFO in March reported that authorized and unfilled positions totalled between $65 and $80 million. Mandating that the Executive eliminate half of these positions would save an estimated $40 million.

5. Reducing the budget for the Office of the Inspector General: $2 million.

This assumes final adoption of the language recommended by the Committee of the Whole to give budget authority over the Inspector General to the Council and Mayor. As proposed earlier, this reduction would acknowledge the diminution in demands placed on the Office due to the loss of Council confidence and the reduction in requests for audits and investigations made by Councilmernbers. The OIG budget has grown enormously in recent years. The FY2000 expenditures totaled $8,735,000. This means that even with a $2 million reduction, the FY 2003 OIG budget would represent a 16% increase over FY 2000 expenditures.

In addition, I look forward to supporting several of the options developed by Councilmember Ambrose related to curbing growth in specific upper-level management ranks, and in raising fees and fines.

cc: Councilmembers

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Council of the District of Columbia
The John A. Wilson Building
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington D.C. 20004

MEMORANDUM

Attached, for your information, is a copy of correspondence from the Office of the Chief Financial Officer responding to questions I raised concerning full time equivalent positions (FTEs) throughout the government. You might find the agency-specific information useful in marking up budgets next week, particularly in those agencies with large numbers of funded but unfilled positions. The OCFO has estimated that if we simply abolished all unencumbered positions, there would be a budget savings realized of from $64 to $80 million. The data also shows that during the Williams Administration the Executive Branch has grown by more than 1,000 employees.

cc: Council Officers
Gregory McCarthy, OIR

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GOVERNMENT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Office of the Chief Financial Officer

Natwar M. Gandhi
Chief Financial Officer

April 16, 2002

Dear Councilmember Patterson:

This letter responds to two requests you made of the Office of Budget and Planning:

1. Total DC payroll and total payroll under the control of the Mayor, expressed in full-time equivalents (FTEs) or a similar statistic, today and for January 1999.

2. Total number of positions that are funded but not encumbered, by department.

Summary

To estimate the number of positions funded but not encumbered, we counted vacancies by comparing FTEs from March 2002 payroll data to FY 2002 authorized FTEs. Some agencies have vacancies (where FTEs are below authorized levels), and others appear to have more FTEs than authorized (see table 2). The "methodology and limitations" section below discusses possible reasons for these variations. A simple sum of apparent operating budget vacancies, for those agencies below their authorized levels, shows 1,942 positions that do not currently appear to be filled.

At an average cost of between $40,000 and $50,000 per position per year, the 1,942 positions would appear to reflect about $78 million to $97 million in gross funds costs. Because about 82 percent of District FTEs are funded through Local (or Intra-District) dollars, an estimate of the costs to the District of these positions would be $64 million to $80 million for a full year. However, the District could not achieve this amount of savings by eliminating these vacant positions. In formulating the budget, agency budget staff and the Office of Budget and Planning apply a historical salary lapse factor to agency Personal Services budgets. Thus, some of the costs associated with these positions are already removed from agency budgets, to the extent they align with historical salary lapse at the agency.

Methodology and Limitations of the Data

To respond to this request, we used payroll data as follows;

• Data in table 1 came from January 30, 1999, and March 23, 2002, payroll runs. Data in table 2 came from the March 23, 2002, payroll and the FY 2002 approved budget.
• We included only those employees who appear with an "active" designation in the payroll data.
• We used the "tour-of-duty" variable in the payroll data to convert to FTEs. For most agencies, a tour-of-duty of 80 hours meant the employee filled one FTE, but for several agencies, such as D.C. Public Schools and the University of the District of Columbia, different tour-of-duty values meant a full FTE. Because "when-actually-employed" (WAE) employees have a "tour-of-duty" value of "0," they do not appear in our tables. For this reason, our data might underestimate FTEs in both time periods.
• For table 2, to compute total FTEs in the approved budget, we added (1) authorized FTEs in the operating budget to (2) FTEs charged to capital, for six agencies, from page 118 of the FY 2003 Proposed Budget and Financial Plan. FTEs charged to capital do not affect operating budget. Another way to see this is to subtract capital FTEs from the agency total in payroll, then compare the resulting figure to the authorized operating budget FTE level.

Payroll records are supposed to be updated by agencies. As the data show, this is not always done in a timely matter. For example, some District employees appear in the data with agency codes for "Office of Communications" (now part of the Mayor's office), "Office of Tax and Revenue" (now part of the Office of the Chief Financial Officer), and "PBC Transition" (now closed; we cannot be certain where these employees currently work). We left the agency codes and affiliations as they appeared in the data rather than trying to update them ourselves.

In addition, if agencies have not deleted employees from payroll data in a timely manner, some employees might appear in the data who are no longer actually employed by the District. We restricted our analysis to those employees listed as "active," but we cannot be sure the data are fully updated.

Changes reflected in table 1 might reflect actual increase or decreases in FTEs, but they might also reflect reorganizations. For example, the increase in the Office of the Mayor is partly explained by the addition of FTEs previously associated with the Office of Communications and the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, offset by splitting off the newly formed Office of Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs. Every agency would have to be examined to see what changes took place over the 1999-2002 time period before conclusions could be drawn about its increase or decrease.
For a variety of reasons, agencies might appear in table 2 to be below or above their authorized FTE level.

• Agencies might be below their authorized levels because of vacancies or because of misclassification. A possible example of misclassification is for employees of the new Office of Veterans' Affairs. This agency appears to have no employees and three vacancies. It is possible that the agency does have employees but that these employees are still coded as being employed by the Office of the Mayor.
• Agencies might be above their authorized levels because of part-year employees. While we converted part-time employees to FTEs based on their tour of duty, we do not know which employee might be part-year or seasonal. For example, the Department of Public Works appears with more FTEs than authorized, but this agency might have paid snowplow operators or other seasonal workers during this pay period. (However, as noted above, WAE employees do not appear, so an agency would not be over its FTE authorization because of W WAEs).

Sincerely,
Natwar Gandhi
Chief' Financial Officer

cc: The Honorable Linda W. Cropp, Chairman, Council of the District of Columbia
John A. Koskinen, City Administrator and Deputy Mayor
Bert Molina, Deputy CFO for Budget and Planning
Jana Leslie-Miller, Director, Legislative Affairs, Office of the Chief Financial Officer
Milou Carolan, Director, D.C. Office of Personnel

Attachments (2)

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Table 1
January 30, 1999 Payroll versus March 23, 2002 Payroll
Full Time Equivalents (FTE)

Notes:

1. This information is based on active employee payroll records during the stated time period.
2. An active employee payroll record does not necessarily mean the employee received a regular salary during the pay period.
3. FTE is calculated from the 'tour of duty' (TOD) variable.
4. WAEs (while actually employed) have TOD=0, which causes their FTE value to equal zero.
5. Agencies are responsible for updating their personnel records on a timely basis.

Under Control of the Mayor

Added to Mayor's Control by 2002 - Receiverships

Not Under Control of the Mayor

Not Under Control of the Mayor - Not Considered District FTEs

Notes: (1) Water and Sewer Authority stopped using DC payroll system between 1999 and 2002. 

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Table 2
FY 2002 Approved Budget versus March 23, 2002 Payroll
Full Time Equivalents (FTE)

Notes:

1. This information is based on active employee payroll records during the stated time period.
2. An active employee payroll record does not necessarily mean the employee received a regular salary during the pay period.
3. FTE is calculated from the 'tour of duty' (TOD) variable.
4. WAEs (while actually employed) have TOD=0, which causes their FTE value to equal zero.
5. Agencies are responsible for updating their personnel records on a timely basis.

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BY AGENCY BY HIGHEST SALARY
ONLY SALARIES GT 100,000.00
DATA FROM CY2002
AS OF 03/19/02

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BY AGENCY BY HIGHEST SALARY
ONLY SALARIES GT 100,000.00
DATA FROM CY 1999
AS OF 03/19/02

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GOVERNMENT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Office of the Chief Financial Officer

Natwar M. Gandhi
Chief Financial Officer

April 29, 2002

The Honorable Kathleen Patterson
Council of the District of Columbia
Committee on the Judiciary
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Suite 107
Washington, D.C. 20004

Dear Councilmember Patterson:

This letter responds to the request you made to the Office of Budget and Planning to provide a breakout of the number of full-time equivalents currently on the District's payroll by agency, by grade. Per your request, the data is also presented by agencies under Mayoral control and, for three public safety agencies, by uniformed/non-uniformed categorization.

As with our responses to previous questions on personnel matters, we relied on data from the District's payroll system to answer this request, in the absence of other city-wide human resource data. Some of the limitations of the payroll data are discussed below.

Summary

The District's payroll system lists 10,400 non-uniformed FTEs that fall under the Mayor's control (see attached table). These FTEs are distributed among grades ranging from zero through ES (Executive Service). Approximately 6 percent of these FTEs are in grades 15 and higher. Grades 10 and below contain approximately 60 percent of the non-uniformed FTEs under the Mayor's control. The distribution of this data roughly follows a bell-shaped curve, with the median at grade 9 (see attached graph).

Methodology and Limitations of the Data

Data came from the March 23, 2002 payroll run.

• We included only those employees who appear with an active designation in the payroll data.
• We used the tour of duty variable in the payroll data to convert to FTEs. For most agencies, a tour of duty of 80 hours meant the employee filled one FTE, but for several agencies, such as D.C. Public Schools and the University of the District of Columbia, different tour of duty values meant a full FTE. Because "when-actually-employed" (WAE) employees have a tour of duty value of zero, they do not appear in our tables. For this reason, our data might underestimate FTEs.
• Payroll data includes agency personnel that are charged to both the operating and capital budgets.

Payroll records are supposed to be updated by agencies. As the data show, this is not always done in a timely matter. For example, some District employees appear in the data with agency codes for Office of Communications (now part of the Mayor's office), Office of Tax and Revenue (now part of the Office of the Chief Financial Officer), and PBC Transition (now closed; we cannot be certain where these employees currently work). We left the agency codes and affiliations as they appeared in the data rather than try to update them ourselves.

In addition, if agencies did not delete employees from payroll data in a timely manner, some employees no longer employed by the District might appear in the data. We restricted our analysis to those employees listed as active, but we cannot be sure the data are fully updated.

We would also like you to be aware that the aggregation of data at the District level could create unusual patterns in the grade distribution for a variety of reasons. You already noted this problem of aggregation with your request to separate the uniformed employees of the Metropolitan Police Department, the Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department, and the Department of Corrections from other District employees. Some additional problems of aggregation could stem from the following:

• District employees fall on multiple pay schedules, which can vary in the number of grades. For example, most District Service (DS) pay schedules range from grades 1 through 18. However, the union pay schedule for nurses ranges from grades 1 through 6.
• District career paths do not necessarily follow the grades in one-step intervals. For example, some white-collar career paths in the District lead an employee from grade 7 to grade 9 to grade 11 to grade 12 (skipping grade 8 and grade 10).
• Large groups of a single occupation could skew some grades. In DCPS, for example, all teachers are classified as grade 15.
• For historical reasons, differences may exist among how agencies have classified their employees. The D.C. Office of Personnel and selected labor union leaders are currently studying this issue as part of their joint classification and compensation reform project.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of further assistance.

cc: The Honorable Linda W. Cropp, Chairman, Council of the District of Columbia
John A. Koskinen, City Administrator and Deputy Mayor
Bert Molina, Deputy CFO for Budget and Planning
Jana Leslie-Miller, Director, Legislative Affairs, Office of the Chief Financial Officer
Milou Carolan, Director, D.C. Office of Personnel

Attachments (2)

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Number of FTEs, by Agency by Grade
March 23, 2002 Payroll

Chart not available on-line.

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