When the Seattle City Council passed its $9.3 million budget-slashing package last month, its ax fell most heavily on groups that had already been hacked to the bone: agencies that provide services to tenants, the elderly, battered women, and the poor. That the city's vulnerable residents were first on the council's chopping block is nothing new. What is new is that, even as the council and Mayor Greg Nickels were insisting that city departments had been "scoured" for every conceivable budget cut, more than 1,000 vacant positions, hundreds of them funded by the council's general fund, were sitting in the budget fully funded but unfilled. Meanwhile, city departments continued to fill positions despite a citywide hiring freeze instituted last August to save money in the face of impending budget cuts.

City Council Member Peter Steinbrueck, who was not on the closed-door committee that came up with the budget cuts, says he asked the city's finance department for a list of funded, vacant positions prior to the vote. What he got was a chart showing little more than the number of vacant positions, with no breakdown between positions that are funded from the general fund--which are part of the council's budget process--and those that are funded through other sources, which are not. The Stranger received some of the information Steinbrueck was seeking through a public-records request, though not the number of positions that came under the council's budget purview.

Two weeks ago, a frustrated Steinbrueck castigated his colleagues for ignoring "millions of dollars floating around in the departments" in the form of vacant, funded positions, "while we are scrounging around for pennies." Then he cast the lone vote against the package of budget cuts.

Meanwhile, despite the hiring freeze, hiring in city departments has continued almost unabated. Of 398 requests for hiring-freeze waivers made by city departments since the beginning of the year, 363 were granted--a success rate of more than 91 percent. Last year, the rate was closer to 87 percent, with 688 of 794 waiver requests approved.

The solution, on its face, seems simple: Get serious about the hiring freeze, and eliminate some of those 1,000 unfilled positions. But the reality, predictably, is more complex. City departments bring their waiver requests before a three-person committee made up of three city staffers who all fall under the mayor's oversight: personnel director Norma McKinney, finance director Dwight Dively, and mayoral staffer John Franklin. The waiver committee has the final say over which requests are granted and which are denied; so far, they've shown little taste for saying no. "We look at whether or not the failure to fill a position will result in an inability to provide critical services or to staff facilities like parks," McKinney says.

As for the second option, eliminating positions: It's a little-known fact that while the city is under a hiring freeze, it is not under a spending freeze. Money that's sitting in a department's budget can be used for virtually any purpose--from office supplies to consultants--as long as it isn't spent to fill a frozen position. "They're using the money for other purposes," Steinbrueck charges. "It preserves [departments'] budgets without requiring them to be accountable for those positions." Eliminating vacant positions isn't as simple as moving money from one place to another in the budget, because in some cases, some of that money has already been spent.

Much of the problem could have been eliminated in the first place, Steinbrueck believes, had the council been given more leeway to come up with its own cuts within the departments, rather than letting departments suggest their own reductions. In many cases, the cuts departments suggested included positions, like firefighters and sworn police officers, that the council considers sacrosanct. Given the options--eliminating vacant positions, whose funding may already have been spent; making politically unpalatable cuts to fire and public safety; or slashing human-services funding--it's hardly surprising that the council made the easier decision.

barnett@thestranger.com