The Daily Mail is reporting that 12 Greene County employees got a nasty surprise yesterday when county officials abruptly announced that they would be laid off to save $1.3 million. The cuts come after unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with county unions, Greene County's Shuan Groden, the county administrator, told the newspaper:
County Administrator Shaun Groden confirmed among the positions being eliminated that three were from the highway department ...
Groden said the county legislature met with representatives from all the unions to discuss changes to wages and benefits.
“Nobody wants to lay anyone off. We have discussed this with unions about making modest changes in contracts. All the unions said they’d make no changes to contracts,” he said.
The layoffs are only part of the budget-cutting. The county is eliminating 42 positions altogether, most of them currently unfilled.
