Dallas to furlough city workers amid $30 million budget shortfall

Dallas officials are furloughing most city employees for three days to address a more than $30 million budget shortfall, the city manager announced Tuesday. 

Law enforcement and certain service employees are exempt from the furlough. 

Most city employees will have to take mandatory leave without pay on July 10, Sept. 4 and Sept. 28. They can’t take sick leave or vacation time instead. Executives at or above the assistant director level are also required to take two additional furlough days before Sept. 16. 

Several employees told The Dallas Morning News they were confused by the timing of the announcement. Department heads were notified of the decision around 10 a.m. and had to tell their employees — not long before city officials sent a news release. 

That gives city staff a little more than a week to prepare for the first furlough day. Services like libraries, homeless outreach and code compliance offices will be closed.

“Furloughs are not our preferred solution; however, they enable us to reduce expenses, protect jobs, and employee health benefits, and continue delivering services to our residents,” City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said in a news release.

Furloughs will save the city about $5 million. City officials previously estimated furloughing non-essential staff would save $1.4 million a day in salary and pension costs.

The city is in a budget crunch because of soaring police and fire overtime costs, lower-than-expected sales tax revenue and rising employee health expenses. The city manager has already implemented a hiring freeze and stopped spending on travel to address the shortfall. 

The city is also facing a $51 million projected shortfall in the upcoming budget.

City Council members have yet to discuss the projected shortfall. Several broke quorum when those deliberations were scheduled and instead went to a FIFA World Cup match with city officials, including Tolbert.

The last time the city took drastic actions like this was during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic when 472 employees were furloughed for about three months. 

The city also furloughed non-essential workers for three days to save $2.6 million in the financial crisis’ aftermath in 2009. That same year, the city called for another round of furlough days. Employees had to take unpaid leave on five different days. 

Council member Gay Donnell Willis said she had hoped the city wouldn’t have to take this step but said Tolbert had been working through alternatives as the city’s budget pressure grew.

“I hate it because it’s affecting people who won’t be paid for three days that they thought they were going to be getting a paycheck for,” Willis said.

Council member Adam Bazaldua said cutting pay “should be the last resort” and called the measure another step in a “series of mismanagement.” 

The budgetary pressures have also fueled criticism about a potential $1 billion bond election in November for public safety and police and fire pension needs. 

Bazaldua said asking voters to approve taking on more debt is “a nonstarter” and that he believes it would be “smart city management to come out publicly and say the same.”

“But to continue to push the narrative that this is needed at a time when there’s clearly the last resort of furloughing employees, just shows a lack of priorities for our city manager’s office,” Bazaldua told The Dallas Morning News. 

Furloughs won’t apply to law enforcement and other first responders or to fee-funded enterprise departments such as sanitation, aviation and water utilities. Some IT and fleet services employees will also be exempt based on “operational needs of the city.”

City officials say furloughs ensure employee benefits stay active with little impact on resident services.

Tolbert in a statement to The News defended the decision, saying the furloughs were an operational step meant to address the current-year budget shortfall while avoiding deeper impacts to city services and employees. She said council members had been told in April that additional cost-containment measures could be implemented.

She said it was her “responsibility” to balance the budget and address shortfalls “through immediate and corrective action.”

Council members said they will face tough budget discussions in August. 

Mayor Eric Johnson said the city should examine every part of city government for savings, focus on core services and avoid raising taxes. He blamed Dallas’ current financial troubles on the “city’s relaxed approach to spending and the longstanding resistance around the horseshoe to making meaningful spending reductions.”

“Dallas literally cannot afford to maintain the status quo,” Johnson said in a statement. 

The city should look beyond “short-term solutions like a furlough,” said council member Cara Mendelsohn. She said the city manager should consider rolling back staffing in some departments that have grown in the past decade, including human resources, data analytics, the city attorney’s office and the mayor and City Council office.

She said the city should consider scaling back boards and commissions, reducing civilian pension cost-of-living adjustments and requiring all employees to return to the office full time.

Council member Zarin Gracey, who was once a city employee, said he was glad the impact to government workers didn’t go beyond furloughs and said Tolbert had to “make a tough decision to do what she can to save the budget.”

Council member Paul Ridley said the furlough announcement underscores the city’s financial pressure heading into budget talks.

“There are going to be some draconian cuts that appear in the budget that we’re going to have a tough time swallowing, but we’re just going to have to wait and see,” Ridley told The News.