VDOT lays off 53 in Culpeper District

It’s a grim start to the new year for many local employees of the Virginia Department of Transportation.

In an effort to reduce costs, VDOT announced Monday it will lay off 53 workers in the Culpeper District, about 10 percent of the district’s work force.

The staffing reductions stem from a six-year, $4.6 billion statewide transportation revenue shortfall and are part of last year’s plans to cut about 1,000 full-time VDOT employees by July 1.

“This has been a challenging process for everyone involved,” said Lou Hatter, public affairs manager for VDOT’s Culpeper District.

Across the state, VDOT will issue layoff notices to 678 workers this week as part of its Blueprint for the Future plan. The agency’s restructuring also calls for closing 15 residency offices this fiscal year.

Of the four residency offices in the Culpeper District, two are being closed: Culpeper and Louisa. The Charlottesville and Warrenton residencies will remain open.

The latest staffing reductions, which came in three stages, are considered the final round.

The Culpeper District employs about 500 people in the counties of Albemarle, Culpeper, Fauquier, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, Madison, Orange, Rappahannock and the city of Charlottesville.

The agency’s first wave of staffing reduction notices came in June, when 450 hourly wage positions were cut. The second eliminated 500 full-time employees in the fall.

“This final stage of staffing reductions has forced the agency to make challenging personnel decisions, but does fulfill its requirement to reduce staffing levels to 7,500 positions,” said David S. Ekern, VDOT commissioner.

VDOT had about 8,500 full-time workers before the cuts.

“We have strategically shifted our staffing structure to eliminate redundancies in administrative and business support functions while ensuring our emergency and incident response commitments can be met statewide,” Ekern said. “VDOT will be a stronger, more focused, more efficient agency as we progress into the next decade.”

This final wave of reductions will affect departments across the agency, but particularly administrative functions such as fiscal and administrative support positions and consolidating residency offices.

The layoff notifications don’t necessarily mean the end of an employee’s career with the agency, as VDOT will use vacancies or its substitution process as placement opportunities for affected workers.

“For more than a year, VDOT has managed vacancies to serve as placement opportunities for affected employees and to reduce the number of employees who involuntarily leave the agency,”

Ekern said. “This system allowed us to place the vast majority of affected employees in previous layoff phases who wished to continue working at VDOT. We are doing everything possible to provide employees with choices during this difficult transition.”