Phil Bredesen

NASHVILLE — Gov. Phil Bredesen said Monday there is a simple explanation for why the number of state employees he needs to accept a voluntary buyout offer jumped 13.2 percent last week when the offers were actually made.

For weeks leading up to last week’s actual offers, the administration had cited a 2,011 figure of employees needed to leave in order to effect some $64 million in annual savings. The figure now stands at 2,277 workers.

Gov. Bredesen told reporters the lower original figure was based on estimates of “how many people you would have to buy out at that average salary to get the dollar numbers you needed.”

“When they got down and did the detailed work on the thing, they had a slightly higher number, presumably because some of the state salaries were on the average lower,” Gov. Bredesen said.

He said there “may also be an issue of the mix in federal funding of those employees as well.”

Some employees in areas such as the Department of Transportation and the Department of Labor and Workforce Development have part of their salaries paid with federal dollars.

The administration has said it plans to spend about $50 million in one-time funds to encourage targeted employees to take the buyouts, which include four months of salary and other items. Offers have been made to 12,000 employees in hopes of getting 2,277 to voluntarily leave.

Tennessee State Employees Association spokesman Chuck Rainey has previously said that if the buyout plan was “so well thought out, why is this a moving target?”

Efforts to reach Mr. Rainey and Employees Association Executive Director Jim Tucker following the governor’s comments were unsuccessful.

Earlier Monday, Gov. Bredesen told the Nashville Rotary Club that the buyout program, prompted by an economic slowdown and weak revenue growth, “really was a good chance to take a close look at how we operate and ID places we can streamline. There are going to be some changes in services and some readjustments.”

The governor acknowledged “you can’t take 2,200 people out of the system and a lot of other budget dollars and leave everything the same.”

Still, he told the largely friendly crowd of business leaders, “I think — as with TennCare — you’ll be astonished at how much you can take out, how little disruption in the services when you actually sit down and see what happens. We’re figuring out how to do things better and more efficiently.”

Mr. Rainey said earlier Monday that some longtime Employee Association members are “upset” because they aren’t getting offers. But he said many others who have gotten buyout offers “are afraid if they don’t take it, they’re going to get fired in January.” As a result, “morale’s horrible” among those employees, he said.

Under the proposal, Gov. Bredesen can come back in January and lay off employees if not enough employees sign up voluntarily.

State workers attending an Employees Association meeting in Nashville last week voiced numerous complaints and worries about the buyout plan.

But efforts to contact affected state employees in Chattanooga through the Employees Association have been unsuccessful. State plans, among other areas, target 26 workers to be cut at the state’s Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute in Chattanooga.

Gov. Bredesen said all the recommendations for eliminating positions are based “on an elaborate business justification, which is published for the world to see. This is a voluntary buyout, and I believe from everything I have that we’re going to get a sufficient number of people in the voluntary buyout.”

If that doesn’t happen, “we’ll take a lot at what the options are,” he said. “We’ll take a look at the economy. We’re under no obligation to look at those same positions as ones we’ll lay off later on. The moving of these things apart by six months really just completely disconnects the two.”

Thirty-three state departments and agencies have submitted plans and justifications for positions they want to cut.

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