Fenty Faulted for Moving Ahead on Buyouts

D.C. Council member Carol Schwartz chastised the Fenty administration yesterday for taking steps to offer buyouts this year to more than 5,000 city employees without getting the council's approval.

In an oversight hearing, Schwartz (R-At Large) accused Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) of using his executive powers in a "legally questionable" way to speed up the process of offering retirement incentives of up to $25,000 to veteran city workers.

Fenty announced in December a plan to offer buyouts to thousands of employees in an effort to move the city toward a younger and less expensive workforce. At the time, he said about 5,100 employees would be eligible, and it was later estimated that the buyouts would save the city as much as $20 million over four years.

Fenty said he would seek council approval of the buyouts, and a bill is awaiting action in Schwartz's committee. But the mayor issued an executive order Feb. 20 for the offers to proceed. Schwartz called the mayor's decision an example of the Fenty administration doing "whatever it wants."

As chairman of the Committee on Workforce Development and Government Operations, Schwartz said she plans to introduce another bill Tuesday on the retirement incentives. She declined to elaborate, other than to say she would offer an "alternative" to Fenty's executive order.

Schwartz said that the mayor's office was pushing for the incentives to be moved earlier this year as emergency legislation but that she refused to do that. "I was just ignored," she said, adding that Fenty then "circumvented the council through an executive order which is legally questionable." She said she fears the retirement incentives could create a "brain drain" of employees with institutional knowledge whom she would prefer to keep on staff.

City Administrator Dan Tangherlini, who appeared at the oversight hearing to talk about the achievements of his office last year, did not appear prepared for Schwartz's criticism. "We have the authority to do certain things," Tangherlini said. "We did not circumvent the council."

Tangherlini said Fenty issued the executive order because he is facing a deadline of sorts at the end of March. The city needs six months to prepare and must act quickly to include the savings in the budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. He said that the buyouts are discretionary and that some critical jobs would be excluded. If an agency did not have the money in its budget, its employees could not take buyouts, he said.

"What this allows us to do is realign and reorganize agencies in a humane way," Tangherlini said.

Initially, police and firefighters were excluded from the offers. Now, Schwartz said, the mayor's order includes them among eligible workers. She said she failed to see how the city would realize substantial savings when many of the workers would have to be replaced.

This is not the first time that council members have accused Fenty of excluding them from key decisions, such as the hiring of Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier.

"My hope is that Mr. Tangherlini will be able to work together about concerns with the executive order, so we can have an amicable solution," Schwartz said.