Amid freeze, Oregon hired 1,931 state workers

SALEM, Ore. (AP) - Amid a three-month government hiring freeze, Oregon hired 1,931 new employees, most for temporary positions, according to a state agency.

In those three months, an exception committee pored over 2,376 requests to fill jobs despite a hiring freeze that Gov. John Kitzhaber ordered in November after learning that tax revenue declines could require spending cuts, The Statesman Journal reported Sunday.

The hiring freeze ended this month with the conclusion of the legislative session.

According to the Department of Administrative Services, the committee ended up approving agency requests to hire 350 permanent employees.

Most of the approved permanent hires were in the Oregon Department of Human Services, which received permission for 73 new employees, and the Oregon Housing Authority, which was authorized to hire 44 people, according to DHS data.

DHS spokesman Gene Evans said continued increases in requests for assistance due to the slowly recovering economy prompted most of his agency's requests for exceptions to the freeze.

"While the state is on a hiring freeze, the case load has just continued to rise," Evans said. "We appreciate DAS approved positions where they realized this isn't about adding employees, this is about keeping up with the flow that continues to come in."

The remaining 1,581 approved hires in state government fell under a number of different temporary categories, said Donna Sandoval Bennett, the state's chief personnel officer. Seasonal workers account for 1,013 of those exceptions, and most of those were approved for the Department of Forestry, the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Fish & Wildlife.

One example of a Fish & Wildlife request involved hiring seasonal workers to count the salmon runs. The Department of Parks and Recreation asked for 404 seasonal hires to prepare for its busy season this summer and fall, agency spokesman Chris Havel said.

"We recruit every year starting about the end of the year, first quarter of the year," Havel said. "Our parks during the busy season are operated mainly by seasonal staff. We bring them on here during mid- to late-spring to perform cleanup and get things ready."

Despite the lifting of the hiring freeze, the state remains under a "smart freeze" as agencies grapple with the best way to meet new staffing goals set by the legislature. House Bill 4131, which Kitzhaber has not yet signed, requires agencies to improve their staff-to-manager ratio by a factor of one during the coming year.

"We are asking everyone to be judicious and disciplined in all of their hiring," Bennett said. "We have not to date seen any tsunami of job postings."

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.