Orange County Executive Did Not Have Authority to Terminate County Employees Before County Legislature Eliminated Positions
The Second Department reversed Supreme Court and determined the Orange County Executive did not have the authority to terminate county employees before the legislature acted to removed funding for the positions:
The doctrine of “[l]egislative equivalency requires that a position created by a legislative act can only be abolished by correlative legislative act”…. Pursuant to section 2.02(1) of the Orange County Charter and Orange County Administrative Code, the Orange County Legislature possesses sole authority to “establish or abolish positions of employment and titles thereof.” Here, the County Legislature had not taken any action to abolish the subject positions at the time the County Executive terminated the subject employees’ employment. While the Orange County Charter and Orange County Administrative Code give the County Executive the authority to “supervise, direct and control and administer all departments” (Orange County Charter § 3.02[e]; Administrative Code § 3.02[e]), they do not give the County Executive the authority to terminate the employment of civil service employees without a proper abolition of the positions by the County Legislature in accordance with the doctrine of legislative equivalency…. Further, County Charter § 4.10(a) does not authorize the County Executive to undertake any “remedial action” constituting, inter alia, unilateral modification to the budget and/or abolition of legislatively created positions…. Therefore, under these circumstances, the County Executive did not have the authority to terminate the subject employees’ employment for economic reasons, effective October 29, 2010. Matter of Civil Serv Empls Assn Inc v County of Orange, 2013 NY Slip Op 04798, 2nd Dept 6-26-13