SOME DEPARTMENTS GET BIG BREAKS.

Byline: Harrison Sheppard Staff Writer

Exemptions to the city's hiring freeze over the past six months have ranged from a single part-time intern position worth a few thousand dollars to departments that got nearly across-the-board approval to fill hundreds of positions.

The Department of Transportation, for example, got one of the largest breaks when it was authorized to maintain 686 positions, at a cost of $43.8 million, rather than allow those positions to remain vacant when people left.

The Library Department was allowed to maintain 108 positions for $3.4 million.

In most cases, city officials note, while the departments were allowed to maintain their current work-force size, that size was almost always below what had previously been authorized in this year's budget.

In some cases, the positions that were maintained were not paid for by the city's general fund, but from special sources of revenue such as grants and fees that could not be used for other purposes, so officials argued that it made sense to keep them filled.

The Public Works Department, for example, received exemptions for 1,552 positions that are paid from the Sewer Construction and Maintenance Fund.

Under Mayor James Hahn's new hiring freeze, however, those positions are no longer completely exempt. Instead, the plan is that whenever a vacancy becomes available in a specially funded position, it will be filled with an employee in a general fund position, and that employee's previous job will remain vacant, thereby saving the general fund.