The Hogan administration is moving to abolish 63 positions — some through layoffs — in the department that runs the state's prisons and parole and probation service.
The administration plans to ask the Board of Public Works Thursday to approve its proposal to cut $3 million from the budget of the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services by reducing its human resources staff.
A state employee union leader said Tuesday that it may be a sign of more cuts to come.
"They're firing people. When you abolish positions, you're firing people," said Patrick Moran, president of AFSCME Council 3. "That's what happens when you cut 2 percent of the department's budget across the board."
A spokesman for Gov. Larry Hogan said there's more to the decision than the 2 percent budget cut imposed on all agencies.
"The department has identified human resources as an area of critical concern that requires urgent attention and is taking steps to restructure and dramatically improve HR within the agency," spokesman Matthew A. Clark said.
He said the proposal "is fundamentally about finding the best possible people to work in an essential state agency charged with ensuring public safety."
A department spokesman declined to say how many of the positions would be cut through layoffs, but a senior legislator said she expected the number to be in the mid- to high 20s.
House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Maggie McIntosh, who was briefed by Public Safety Secretary Stephen T. Moyer, said she was told that some positions would be reclassified and that their current occupants would be allowed to reapply.
The department said in a statement that it was making the move to "overhaul and streamline" its operations and to address "long-standing issues" in human resources."
"The proposed reorganization will provide for unity of command, centralized direction and authority and uniformity of employee processes," the department said.
Officials said the reorganization will consolidate human resources workers who are now scattered among the agency's far-flung facilities into five "operational hubs."
They said the current structure — with human resources workers at each facility — creates "duplication of services, overlap, communication problems, and disincentives to any economies of scale."
The department has faced questions about both the pace and quality of its hiring. Aides to Hogan pointed to hundreds of vacancies, many of them for frontline corrections officers, that have yet to be filled. The department has been mired in scandal in recent years over corrupt relationships between officers at the Baltimore City Detention Center and prisoners in their charge.
McIntosh, a Baltimore Democrat, said the changes might be justified.
"Do I see anything here that says this is terrible? No," she said.
Still, McIntosh said, she wished the department had brought the cuts to her committee when the General Assembly was in session.
The lawmaker said that she would not be surprised to see more cuts as departments absorb the across-the-board spending cut Hogan proposed in January for the year that began July 1.
"You will find state employees who are no longer employed," she said.
Hogan boasted in January that he had submitted a balanced budget that didn't raise taxes without the need for layoffs or furloughs. But when he announced a buyout program in February, he expressed the hope that it would "mitigate the need for significant layoffs in the future."
Moran said the department is already operating at 1970s staffing levels despite a growth in state population.
"I would not be shocked to see more of these antics from other departments," he said.