NASHVILLE — In retrospect, Gov. Phil Bredesen says, he probably should have offered a “richer” voluntary buyout package to state employees whose positions he wants to abolish.

With the Aug. 5 deadline looming, only about 1,400 of 12,000 targeted state employees have signed up for the buyout. The administration says it needs 2,200 to 2,300 workers to leave voluntarily or else there could be layoffs early next year.

“If I had known what was going to happen to the economy in the future and what the impact was going to be on people’s psyches with $4 gas and those things, you might have anticipated it would take a little more to get somebody to want to leave and we might have tried to sweeten it up,” the governor said earlier this week.

Although acknowledging “we probably didn’t make it quite strong enough to get the numbers we needed,” Gov. Bredesen said the state can’t backtrack and “sweeten” the $50 million package in mid-stream “because of how the law works.”

In regard to layoffs, Gov. Bredesen said, “I guess I’d like to cross that bridge when we get there.”

Buyout plan benefits include four months of base salary and $500 additional salary per year of state service. The salary provisions will be worth $23,000 to $47,000, depending on a worker’s length of employment, according to administration officials. The plan also provides some help with health insurance as well as college tuition assistance of up to $10,800 over two years.

The Tennessee State Employees Association, which represents some of the state’s 47,000 workers, did not respond Thursday to requests for comments.

On Monday, the organization’s Executive Director Jim Tucker said through a spokesman that it remains “too soon” to make predictions about the voluntary buyout program’s success.

Faced with falling revenues, Gov. Bredesen and state lawmakers this spring slashed $468 million from the governor’s proposed budget for the 2009 fiscal year, which took effect July 1. Some $64 million of those cuts is expected to come from cutting the state’s work force.

Led by House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, D-Covington, lawmakers inserted language in legislation that prohibits the governor from laying anyone off until the General Assembly returns in January.

“The buyout didn’t work as well as we all had hoped it would,” Gov. Bredesen said. “It’s not a disaster. It’s going to help us some. We’re going to have to do something else alongside of that to get to the numbers we need ... But we’ll work it through.”

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