Agencies Struggle to Define “Critical” Positions

On Friday, I wrote about Gov. Perdue’s lack of clarity regarding what she envisions to be state government’s “core priorities.” Unsurprisingly, this lack of vision and definition has resulted in confusion from state agencies as they try to define which positions are “critical” in their agency so as to implement a hiring freeze of non-critical positions. As this N&O article describes:

Gov. Bev Perdue call for state agencies to voluntarily impose a hiring freeze for noncritical positions is being met with varying degrees of support, wariness and questions over what state jobs should be subject to a freeze.

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But the difficulty may occur in defining what jobs should be judged critical.

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Secretary of State Elaine Marshall’s office would like to see additional information defining critical jobs before commenting.

Without a clearly stated vision of the proper role of state government in society, assignments to identify “critical positions” is an exercise in futility.