Public Employees Say They Can Do The Job — And Cheaper
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- May
- 8
The New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF) said today that the state could save $750 million over the next three years if it stopped using as many private consultants and handed the work over to public employees.
“Everyone is quick to throw out the popular and overused phrase ‘hiring freeze’ to solve the state’s budget gap,” PEF President Ken Brynien said in a statement. “Our report, based on research from the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) proves the real savings is in a consultant freeze.”
PEF put out its research that showed that more than 23,000 private consultants are employed by state agencies at an estimated cost of $704 million in the 2006-07 fiscal year.
“Compounded over three years, our plan, which calls for eliminating about half of all consultants, would save state taxpayers $765 million,” Brynien said. “Half or more of the savings could come just by replacing information technology (IT) and engineering and architectural consultants with state employees. ”
PEF is the state’s second-largest state-employee union, representing 58,000 professional, scientific and technical employees.
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on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 10:43 am by Joseph Spector.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
