Costa Mesa Lays Off Half Its Workers, One Jumps Off City Hall

I had previous written about Costa Mesa's (CA) plan to outsource many of its city services. Yesterday they were handing out the layoff notices and one employee took his own life in a very dramatic way:

As shock and grief continue to settle over many city workers, police are trying to retrace the steps of Huy Pham, a city worker who apparently jumped to his death after being called in to get a layoff notice.

The city maintenance worker had been nursing a broken ankle Thursday, but was called in about 2:30 p.m. to receive a layoff notice. Instead, the 29-year-old man who worked for the city for more than four years jumped from the roof of the five-story civic center. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Costa Mesa Police are following the death as a suicide investigation, and detectives have been interviewing city employees and other witnesses that may have had contact with Pham before he died, said Sgt. Darrel Rainey. Because of the highly charged nature of the death, the investigation might take longer than normal, police officials said.

Pham was one of 213 city employees who was expected to receive a pink slip by the end of the day Thursday, slashing Costa Mesa's original workforce of 472 employees. The City Council voted earlier this month to outsource 18 city services, including firefighting, maintenance, information technology and payroll.

"When layoffs were coming, he thought he was probably going to be rehired," by the new contractor, said Pham's brother John Pham. There was no indication his brother was despairing, he said.

On the TV news last night the local employee organizations quickly tried to blame the City Council and especially the Mayor for the death. That's an easy political gimmick but completely ignores the years of spending and contract obligations, not to mention the failing economy, that eventually led up to the decision to reduce costs through outsourcing. As the article goes on to suggest, there are some pretty strong feelings of anger among the employees right now:

Three workers had to restrain a city employee who tried to charge at Councilmen Jim Righeimer and Stephen Mensinger.

Another city employee muttered, "You're not welcome here," referring to the councilmen.

Nick Berardino, general manager of the Orange County Employees Association, was seen cursing at city CEO Tom Hatch in the lobby of City Hall.

"You cannot give out notices wholesale like that in this economy," Berardino said. "That's what's going to happen."

As I said in my previous post on the subject, outsourcing makes a tremendous amount of sense, especially in an area like Orange County where you have city after city in close proximity to one another.  We may never know what drove this employee to take his own life, especially if he was likely to be rehired by the new contractor.  It's a sad story, but there's a new financial reality that all public agencies will have to face in the coming year.