{
  "id": "2003-julyaugust-analysis-spots-hiring-during-state-crunch",
  "slug": "2003-julyaugust-analysis-spots-hiring-during-state-crunch",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2003-julyaugust-analysis-spots-hiring-during-state-crunch.html",
  "year": 2003,
  "month": "July/August",
  "monthNum": 7,
  "headline": "Analysis spots hiring during state crunch",
  "kicker": "SPOTLIGHT: JOBS, PAY, & PERKS",
  "author_name": "Spencer Hunt",
  "author_title": "",
  "affiliation": "Cincinnati Enquirer",
  "summary": "An Ohio newspaper analysis revealed that state agencies hired thousands of workers, including highly paid administrators, despite Gov. Bob Taft's hiring freeze during a budget crisis, with nearly 1,000 non-essential hires costing taxpayers up to $39 million annually.",
  "keywords": [
    "hiring",
    "budget",
    "analysis"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Government & Politics",
    "Data & Databases"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "Excel"
  ],
  "full_text": "In the midst of a growing budget crisis, Ohio Gov. Bob Taft outlined his short-term plan to help keep the state's finances in order.\n\nIn addition to cutting back spending at state agencies and raiding the state's \"rainy day fund\" for $350 million, Taft told reporters he would halt hiring. \"With the exception of people critical to health, safety and those involved in revenue-generating activity, we will put all hiring on hold effective immediately,\" the governor said.\n\nThat statement, an incorrect tip from a good source, and several e-mails from the state's payroll system helped lay the groundwork for an Enquirer analysis that showed state departments and agencies hired thousands of workers, including several highly paid administrators, while the budget continued to tank.\n\nThe tip was a complaint that Taft's own cabinet leaders ignored his freeze and hired new people \"left and right.\" It turned out that the tip was wrong, but that rumor had a kernel of truth.\n\nA few months after he announced the freeze, Taft lifted it. That was on July 1, 2002, the beginning of the state's new fiscal year.\n\nThere was still a story to write when a cursory glance at state payroll data in an Excel spreadsheet revealed more than 5,000 people had been hired or promoted since July\n\nThese hires were made while dwindling income and sales tax revenue led Taft to cut spending again. This time he eliminated $140 million that would have gone to schools and universities. He'd also recently announced his plans to raise more than $3.1 billion in new taxes.\n\nThe story, published March 30, showed 3,859 people had been hired or promoted to new jobs since July 1. Nearly 1,000 of those people were paid for work not directly linked to health care, public safety or highway maintenance at a taxpayer cost of up to $39 million a year.\n\nThe analysis was done in Excel, using data obtained under the state public records act from the Ohio Department of Administrative Services. This agency handles the payroll for all non-university state employees.\n\nGetting data was not a problem. Getting the best, most useful data was. The data arrived by e-mail in delimited text at no cost, usually within a day of a request. The spreadsheet had about 5,000 rows, one line per person.\n\nThe first spreadsheet showed the names, agencies, hiring dates and hourly pay rates. I eventually got a spreadsheet that included a more detailed job description, instead of a code, and columns showing if the person hired was still employed.\n\nI sorted the data by job description, name and hiring date to identify people and take out those who weren't included in the analysis. For instance, there were hundreds of college interns and temporary state fair workers who had to be cut out because they worked for only a matter of weeks.\n\nThere were people who had been hired under a federal program that supplied all the money. These hires would have occurred regardless of the freeze. Since the payroll records didn't identify which jobs were paid by federal funds, I had to do some additional reporting by calling agencies that had hired a significant number of new employees.\n\nIn several cases in which more than 20 people had been hired during the same month with the same job description, it turned out that the hiring was done with funds from a new grant or federal program. Additional reporting with officials in other agencies turned up even more federally paid employees.\n\nAt the end of this process, 3,859 employees remained. Because state agency officials argued without exception that every hire would have been made under the freeze, my editors and I had to come up with our own definition of an essential employee. We considered anyone directly involved in making sure others were healthy and safe to be essential. We included prison guards, highway patrol cadets, cooks, hospital workers, mental health workers, workers at state institutions for the mentally retarded, nurses, doctors and psychiatrists. Psychiatrists were a tough call because almost every one was paid more than $100,000 a year. We also included highway maintenance workers, because it's essential to keep the roads in good repair.\n\nThat eliminated another 2,870 employees. Finding out exactly how much money the non-essential state employees cost taxpayers was another problem because the data did not show whether they worked full time or part time. Other states' payroll records may show this, and anyone else thinking about doing a similar story should certainly ask for it.\n\nIn this case, the $39 million figure we arrived at had to be qualified. We wrote in the story that the figure is probably high, but we also decided not to include the cost of health insurance and other benefits, which payroll officials say tack on another 30 percent onto the base pay.\n\nOnce the data was in shape and I had created a separate spreadsheet showing only the non-essential hires, the remaining analysis consisted of simple sorts in Excel. Sorting by pay revealed the most expensive hires. Sorting by date showed who had been hired on or shortly after July 1.\n\nIn a few cases, expensive employees were hired right after the freeze was lifted. The prime example was a Department of Education employee who was hired July 8 for $120,000 to help make sure state education reforms dovetailed with the federal \"No Child Left Behind\" initiative. Sorting by job description showed how many of each type of employee was hired. Sorting by state agency showed which sector of government did the most hiring. Ohio's lead welfare agency, the Department of Job and Family Services, hired 140 people.\n\nI also used Excel to calculate the average cost of a subset of new hires. For example, I determined that the Department of Education hired 28 education consultants, people who act as liaisons with local school districts, at an average $53,500 a year.\n\nThis kind of analysis takes some time especially if you're learning just what payroll records can and cannot show you along the way. The result, I believe, is a story that offers a perspective on state finances and spending that only an independent observer can provide.\n\nOf course, you will also have to deal with state officials who probably will argue that every single person they've hired was out of an absolute necessity.\n\nThe best response came from the Ohio Department of Taxation, which hired 55 auditors in December and January to beef up collections. While each auditor was paid an average $34,500 salary, they claimed each collected about $457,000 in unpaid taxes.\n\nThat prompted a spokesperson to say, \"They are more than carrying their weight.\"\n\nContact Spencer Hunt by e-mail at shunt@cincinna.gannett.com",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
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  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2003-julyaugust-analysis-spots-hiring-during-state-crunch.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2003-julyaugust-analysis-spots-hiring-during-state-crunch.json"
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