Top House lawmaker questions unfilled state jobs in Florida budget review

State agencies have been playing a financial shell game, taking money set aside for unfilled positions and using that to boost the pay of existing employees.

Florida state agencies are struggling to fill thousands of positions due to low pay and a tight job market.
To compensate, agencies are using funds allocated for unfilled positions to boost the salaries of existing employees.
Lawmakers are now questioning the budgeting practices and seeking solutions to address the staffing crisis.

A recent legislative hearing at first hinted it would explore a hollowing out of state government: state offices short on thousands of workers, unable to deliver taxpayer paid services to Floridians.

But scratching at the surface suggested there was more at play.

As state Rep. Vicki Lopez recently found out after an examination of the length of scores of job vacancies, a roll call in state offices may actually awaken hordes of paper people – workers who exist only as a line item in the state budget.

Lopez, a Miami Republican, chairs the Florida House of Representatives’ State Administration Committee. It writes the budget for 12 agencies, including the departments of Revenue, Financial Services and Lottery, along with a half-dozen other offices that handle much of the financial paperwork for the state.

Low pay in a tight job market makes it hard to fill vacancies, that panel was told. So state agencies have been playing something of a financial shell game, taking money set aside for unfilled positions and using that to boost the pay of existing employees.

At a hearing last week, Lopez said their bureaucratic budget maneuvering – requesting funding for 10 positions and leaving five of them vacant to hire another five above the pay-grade minimum – has to end.

Lopez said, “I think we need to drill down on this and ask, ‘are we budgeting correctly?’ I want a budget that reflects the real situation.”

Still, there are hundreds of funded positions, budget lines under Lopez’s oversight, that have gone unfilled for nearly three years, and some as long as six.

Jim Zingale, executive director of the Department of Revenue (DOR), told lawmakers the long-time vacant positions are extremely important because “we need them to fund the filled ones.”

DOR annually collects and distributes more than $40 billion in sales tax revenue, another $1.6 billion a year in child support payments, and administers a property tax regimen that provides hundreds of billion dollars to schools and local governments.

A senior attorney position there, with a starting salary of $58,000, has been vacant since 2019. Another 60 positions have been open for at least two years.

At that Feb. 12 meeting, Lopez supplied the committee with information about payrolls of agencies they oversee, reporting a combined staff shortage of 12%, or 1,372 vacant positions, with more than half of the jobs as accountants, auditors, tax specialists, investigators and inspector positions in Tallahassee.

“Meanwhile I have other services that require money that we say we don’t have,” Lopez said.

State workers say bids for proposals, execution of contracts and start of projects have been delayed by a lack of workers. Vicki Hall, president of AFSCME Council 79, the largest labor union chapter for state public service workers, said “employees are overworked and burning out, … meaning residents are not getting the services they deserve.”

Florida is among a dozen states trying to figure out how to cope with the end of Biden-era pandemic aid and rising costs in health care and education without increasing taxes, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. State economists warn that a $2 billion surplus this year could plunge to a $6.9 billion deficit in two years.

Zingale as well as Scott Fennell, the deputy chief financial officer at the Department of Financial Services, and John Schraeder, chief of staff at the Department of Management Services, all said the state has difficulty hiring people. DMS, for instance, has been without an inspector general for almost two years.

Zingale and Fennell cite the state’s low starting salaries compared to the private sector as the reason why. To remain competitive in hiring they said their departments often use some of the money appropriated for the vacant positions to pay new hires above the pay grade minimum – pushing starting salary to the pay grade median, which usually is thousands of dollars more, as much as $9,000 in some cases.

The department has left two attorney positions unfilled for six years, and has another 50 positions of regulatory analysts, investigators, and law enforcement vacant for at least two years. Overall, it currently has 276 vacant positions.

When Lopez asked Fennell about Gov. Ron DeSantis’ budget recommendation to cut 62 full-time DFS positions, Fennell said that “would be a lot.”

“There’s probably some positions that we could cut without major heartache. We’d like to work with you and your staff to come up and give you a list of those,” Fennell said.

Lopez directed the agencies to submit proposed spending reductions of 2–3% by Friday, Feb. 21. The spending cuts can be achieved through elimination of positions.

“I want you to really scrub down your operating budgets and see where we have waste or excess categories. I, however, do not want reductions that would have an overall decrease in the services to the state of Florida,” Lopez told the agency heads.

Talking to reporters after the meeting, Lopez outlined the key questions she wants answered.

“Are we budgeting appropriately,” she started, and “do we have enough people? I mean, do we really have enough people to do the jobs? If we don’t, are we paying them the correct salary?”

James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com and is on X as @CallTallahassee.