Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 21, 1995 TAG: 9502210087
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Ninety percent of the exemption requests have come from the state's college and universities, and four of every five have been approved.
In the first two months of the freeze, colleges and universities sought permission to hire the equivalent of more than 7,200 full-time workers, said Steve Katsurinis of the Department of Planning and Budget. They received permission to hire more than 5,770 of them.
Katsurinis said the community college system alone asked to fill more than 2,220 jobs. Only six were denied.
``Our colleges, frankly, have done an excellent job,'' said Arnold Oliver, chancellor of the Virginia Community College System. ``They've been very judicious in their requests for exemptions.''
Allen's order applied to vacancies among the 110,000 positions in the executive branch. The judicial and legislative branches were not affected.
Robert Lauterberg, the director of the Planning and Budget Department, said the freeze has left several hundred jobs vacant. State agencies are thinking long and hard before seeking permission to hire people, he said.
An agency or school can hire someone if it convinces both its supervisor in the governor's Cabinet and Lauterberg's office that the job is critical.
Some universities haven't fared as well as others. Old Dominion University was denied permission to fill more than half of the more than 600 jobs it has asked for. David Harnage, Old Dominion's acting vice president for administration and finance, said the schools need flexibility to make hiring decisions on their own.
``It certainly is a laborious task to do each position this way,'' Harnage said. ``I would hope at some point we would examine the process we're using for this and identify some employment levels and allow the institutions to manage to those levels.''
Other agencies have asked for few exemptions. The Department of Transportation sought permission to hire temporary workers to run snowplows but did not ask to replace any of the 110 employees who left the department between Dec. 1 and Feb. 1, department spokesman Bill Worrell said. The loss represents less than 1 percent of the department's payroll.
``People know there's a hiring freeze, and so you do the best you can without,'' Worrell said. ``We are looking at new ways of doing things, new ways of getting things done.''
One reason colleges and universities have hired so many people is the turnover in faculty. At the College of William and Mary, 60 percent of its requests for exemptions were for instructors, said Provost Gillian Cell. At community colleges, about 45 percent of the courses are taught by part-time faculty, who must be hired at the beginning of each semester.
Secretary of Education Beverly Sgro anticipated a large number of exemption requests from schools and sought to allay fears of gridlock by promising that all requests would be processed in 48 hours. For the most part, college officials said, the state has met that goal.
``There was a flood of paper at the very beginning,'' Cell said. ``And since we worked through that flood, it's speeded up a lot.''
by CNB