Here’s the Humane Way to Conduct a Government Reduction-In-Force — Which San Diego Should Follow

By  Kate Callen / Op-Ed San Diego Union-Tribune / Jan. 30 – Feb. 1, 2026

Any government facing a financial implosion has three options: increase revenue with new or expanded taxes or fees, cut spending by reducing services and cut spending by shrinking the workforce.

The city of San Diego is aggressively pursuing Option 1 (trash fees, Balboa Park parking) and gingerly exploring Option 2 (eliminating services to neighborhoods). But Option 3 seems to be off the table. Why? Are elected officials too squeamish to take a painful but essential step? Too attached to faithful staff?

I know more than most San Diegans do about government reductions-in-force (RIFs). I lived through one in the 1980s while working as a science writer in the U.S. Public Health Service.

The experience was hellish. But because the agency handled it professionally, the payroll shrank appreciably, and few of us landed on the street. There is no reason, besides intransigence, that City Hall can’t do the same.

The humane way to reduce staff, to borrow a favorite expression of my Navy veteran husband, is to plan your work and work your plan. My agency’s RIF proceeded gradually and methodically, and employees were kept informed at every step.

The first step was attrition. There were no new hires — zero. Essential vacant positions were filled from within. Non-essential jobs were eliminated, which sometimes meant that non-essential programs were phased out.

Early retirement was offered to senior managers, who felt peer pressure to make way for younger vulnerable colleagues in a last-hired-first-fired system. The threat of unemployment spurred many of us to look for new jobs, which helped trim the payroll. And employees who were eventually laid off received priority consideration for future openings.

There is no way to sugarcoat the awfulness of those months of anxiety. But at least we knew the process was fair because there was total transparency. No VIP could pull strings to spare a favorite. No deals were cut behind closed doors.

Is the city of San Diego capable of anything like this? Not the way it operates now. Too many City Hall employees spend most of their time serving the political agendas of elected officials instead of the public’s interest. Without strict enforcement of RIF rules, management factotums would be given safe harbor, and workers who only serve the public would be sacrificed.

Ironically, a hiring surge of factotums has helped push San Diego to the financial brink. As Michael Zucchet of the Municipal Employees Association has pointed out, “program manager” and “program coordinator” positions have mushroomed over the past decade, from 70 to 393, a 461% increase.

At City Hall, salaries of such middle-management jobs typically start at $200,000. Those 393 jobs — 100 of which were created since 2023 — cost the city at least $64.6 million a year.

And the new administrators did not go through the standard application, review and vetting process that less-privileged city employees experience. They were hand-picked by the mayor’s office and comfortably ensconced with minimal fuss.

“You get to hire whoever you want,” Zucchet told Union-Tribune reporter David Garrick in July. “You don’t have to deal with any pesky rules, you get to pay them twice as much as you’d pay a classified employee and there’s not a lot of transparency as to what goes on with these positions.”

This has become a flagrantly abusive practice. A RIF presents a unique opportunity to curb it.

Recent middle managers don’t have the seniority that helps protect job security in RIFs. Their positions would receive the impartial reviews that should have happened before they were hired. What exactly do they do? How do they serve the public? What are their performance metrics?

I don’t want to see anyone lose a job. I almost lost mine decades ago, and it was frightening. But I also don’t want Balboa Park to suffer from a sharp decline in visitors. I don’t want my neighborhood infrastructure to keep eroding. And I definitely don’t want to pay ballooning fees and taxes for dwindling city services.

The harsh reality in both the public and private sectors is that layoffs can be necessary when finances crumble. There is a lot of fiscal pain in San Diego right now. It should be distributed evenly.

Callen is a former United Press International San Diego bureau chief, writer for the OB Rag who lives in North Park.