Denver Mayor Mike Johnston is backing efforts to rewrite the city’s career service rules governing layoffs to make it easier to let employees go in light of a $250 million budget deficit over the next 18 months.

A panel of city officials met last Wednesday to hear comments from employees over the proposed changes to “Rule 14: Separation other than Dismissal.”

More than 700 people attended the meeting, which was conducted both in person and online.

Details regarding city layoffs are expected to be released sometime in August.

Under the proposed changes, seniority — or length of service — would no longer play a major role in inoculating city employees from layoffs. Instead, it would be considered, along with other factors, such as performance, skills and merit.

“We agree that this change is necessary given our current economic challenges and need to reduce our expenses — 70% of which is personnel — while continuing to provide world-class services,” Jordan Fuja wrote in an email to The Denver Gazette. “Seniority should and will be taken into account; however, leaving merit out of the equation is unfair to employees and doesn’t provide supervisors the tools they need to make the right decisions for their teams and for the city.”

City employees called the change “insulting,” saying it creates opportunities for managers to “eliminate critics and rivals.”

“As a current city employee, I, along with many others, are actively in the rat race of finding another job,” wrote reddituser Routine-Mycologist-3 on the social media platform. “We are already short-staffed in my department, Parks and Recreation. In fact, I inherited the jobs of two other people on top of mine, due to the hiring freezes.”

Others posted about declining morale among employees and raised questions about why the city hadn’t identified the budget problem sooner.

“My concern is that immediate reductions in staff are followed by inefficiency and less effective programs, which, in turn, lead to a rush to plug the gaps with professional services contracts,” said Erik Clarke, an executive financial controller in the private sector and former candidate for Denver City Auditor in 2023. “Contracting out work that could be handled internally often costs more and delivers less. It’s more efficient to meet long-term needs with long-term, skilled staffing levels.”

Union officials from Teamsters Local 455 have launched an online email campaign for Johnston to “make changes in negotiations and not behind closed doors,” adding that the proposed rule changes would undermine employee seniority rights before ever sitting down at the bargaining table.

Voters in November of last year approved Referral Question 2U, which makes nearly 7,000 city employees who are not already part of a union eligible to organize and form bargaining units on Jan. 1, 2026.

The measure does not include the city’s uniformed police officers, sheriff’s deputies or firefighters — who already established their own collective bargaining rights.

According to Denver’s Ballot Information Book published prior to the November 2024 election, implementation costs for the new collective bargaining measure are estimated at $3 million for 2025 and $2.2 million for 2026 and onward.