PLAIN DEALER REPEATS BOGUS CITY JOBS CLAIM: In an editorial today, the PD joins Crain's and Roldo in calling for layoffs of City workers -- as early as January -- to head off a projected $52 million deficit in 2004. And like Crain's and Roldo, the PD undergirds its hasty attack on City workers' livelihoods with a claim that thousands of jobs were added to City payrolls in the 1990s:

No one should be cheered by the prospect of public employees losing their jobs, and the administration must be careful to preserve essential services. But since the city added nearly 2,000 employees during the 1990s, careful reductions need not prove crippling.

As I pointed out here on October 7, this claim is wildly wrong. Here, again, are the facts:

I went to the library and got the actual employment figures for General Fund departments (not just General fund employees) for the last ten years, and here's what I found:
... The City added a total of about 600 full-time-equivalent positions from 1992 to 2002.
... About 150 of these FTE positions were in Muny Court.
... About 600 FTE positions were added in the Public Safety Department... including 200 police patrol officers, 60 firefighters, and 95 "institutional guards".
... All the other General Fund departments combined lost about 170 FTE positions from 1992 to 2002.

I'll be sending the full spreadsheet with these numbers to the PD tomorrow... after which I'll confidently await their correction. Anybody else want to see it?