Mayor: New Orleans must lay off 3,000 workers

From www.cafepress.com. All proceeds go to disaster relief.

Ryan Velasco alerts us to this Associated Press story via MSNBC -- "Mayor: New Orleans must lay off 3,000 workers: City can't afford employees following Katrina, Nagin says."

From the article:

I wish I didn't have to do this. I wish we had the money, the resources to keep these people,” Nagin said. “The problem we have is we have no revenue streams.” Nagin described the layoffs as “pretty permanent” and said that the city will work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to contact municipal employees who fled the city in the aftermath of Katrina, which struck about a month ago. The mayor said the move will save about $5 million to $8 million of the city's monthly payroll of $20 million. The layoffs will take place over the next two weeks. [This is a total of $60 million to $96 million/year.]

In Louisiana's Looters, the Washington Post editorialized against what its editorial board saw as unseemly greed in seeking upwards of $250 billion for reconstruction, in addition to monies already earmarked. (cf. Senator Mary Landrieu's response, Why Louisiana Matters)

In any event, it seems like some of this great amount of money going to the Gulf Coast could be programmed to assist municipalities in retaining employees.

Are transit or planning department employees deemed essential? (with nods to Dan Malouf and Ryan Velasco...) AP photo by Kevork Djansezian.