Transit to lay off more than 100 workers

The Orange County Transportation Authority will lay off more than 100 workers , including mechanics, beginning in March. (Photo courtesy of Orange County Transportation Authority)

ORANGE – The Orange County Transportation Authority will lay off 118 employees beginning in March as a result of cuts to county bus service – and more job cuts could be on the horizon.

The initial number will include 60 bus drivers, 15 mechanics and 43 administrative workers. The laid off drivers and mechanics will be notified in late February, and the administrative workers sometime before the end of the fiscal year in June, according to OCTA spokesman Joel Zlotnik.

The workers are being let go because OCTA is cutting its bus service by 150,000 hours beginning March 14 and won’t need as many people to run the transit system, said OCTA CEO Will Kempton.

Kempton said the layoffs are unavoidable because OCTA’s bus system is facing a $330 million shortfall over the next five years, and running a deficit is not an option. The state has drastically reduced funding it provides local governments for transit, and sales tax revenues for OCTA are down sharply -– 15 percent in the third quarter of 2009 compared to the year before – due to the ongoing recession.

“We’ve talked to our employees [and] told them how serious the situation is,” Kempton said. “We want their engagement and involvement in [finding] the solution to this problem. But it’s not going to be good.”

One of Kempton’s first acts after taking over in August as OCTA’s CEO was to sign layoff notices for 96 employees. This will be the second round of layoffs on his watch.

The March cuts to bus service will bring the number of bus service hours down 20 percent from its peak of 1.9 million hours per year in 2008.

And additional service cuts could be coming in late summer or fall, necessitating yet another round of layoffs – possibly as many as 100 more jobs.

“If there’s another [service cut], it means more coach operators [laid off], it means more mechanics and it means potentially more admin people as well,” Kempton said.

OCTA has taken steps to slash expenses and avoid layoffs, he said. The agency estimates it has trimmed $3.9 million from its operating expenses by eliminating merit pay increases, freezing administrative salaries, reducing paid time off for employees and furloughing senior employees for one day.

But significant shortfalls remain, Kempton said.

“I’ve been in the transportation business for 36 years, and I’ve never seen it this bad,” he said.

Tags: Budget cuts, bus, layoffs, O.C. Transportation Authority, Orange, transit, Will Kempton

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 11:26 am and is filed under Government-Politics . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.