The Department of Human Resources and Labor Relations presented its FY26 level-service request and identified how a 3% reduction would affect services.

Bill Mahoney (attorney/director in HR and labor relations) walked council and the administration through HR functions — recruiting, onboarding, background checks, civil-service administration and labor-relations work. He said the department had processed more than 4,000 applications for 134 postings through mid-March this year.

Mahoney and HR staff said the program they would most likely cut under a mandatory 3% reduction is the employee assistance program (EAP), which provides counseling and wellness services to employees. Mahoney said the EAP is used during crises and provides financial counseling, wellness coaching and licensed clinician services; he described it as a service employees reach for "when it's when it's more annual, and they need some help." Councilors asked about current annual cost; Mahoney recorded the department's annual EAP cost in the hearing remarks.

HR also described a request for electronic records-management software to replace manual filing of roughly 5,000 new employee records per year and long-term retention of personnel files. HR staff said the software would reduce manual processing for forms such as harassment and residency acknowledgements and greatly improve search and storage efficiency. The department discussed comparative pricing approaches (higher initial cost with lower maintenance vs. higher ongoing subscription) and asked IT and procurement to seek the most cost-effective option if approved.

Why it matters: HR said it is running a lean staffing model. The department warned cuts would directly affect employee-facing programs (training, the EAP) and could slow onboarding and records access times for other departments.

Attribution: direct quotes and numbers in this article are taken from remarks by Bill Mahoney and Caitlin Julius during the HR segment of the FY26 hearings.