ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - St. Louis City Mayor Tishaura Jones announced Friday the City of St. Louis will be implementing a hiring freeze for all non-essential employees after an emergency meeting Friday morning about "present threats to our revenue."
The hiring freeze comes days after the Missouri House passed a bill exempting St. Louis remote workers from paying the one percent earnings tax. The bill now heads to the Senate.
Jones highlighted the hiring freeze bill, a firefighter pension bill that Jones vetoed, along with pending litigation from a lawsuit regarding the city's earning tax, as areas that could be a huge blow to the city's budget.
In a press release, Mayor Jones say the bill passing would "blow a huge hole in our budget" if passed by the Missouri State Senate and signed by Gov. Mike Parson. According the release, the budget director's estimates of the impact of this bill is likely to be at least $109 million per year to the city's budget.
While the veto override for the fire fighter pension bill could "blow a hole in (the city's) budget to the tune of 10s of millions of dollars or more." The Board of Alderman overrode the veto Friday Morning by a 10-3 vote.
As part of the counters to deal with the potential threat of loss revenue, Mayor Jones' put a hiring freeze for all non-essential employees and with the length of the freeze undetermined, and the City's budget for the 2025 fiscal year "is going to be very conservative."
The hiring freeze will not affect city employees, with a few of them including police officers, 911 operators, sanitation and water division workers.
Jones posted on social media, expressing disappointment to the Board of Alderman for overriding her veto on the pension for firefighters.
"I'm disappointed to see a majority of the Board of Alderman made a fiscally irresponsible decision to endanger our city's budget by overriding my veto of (the firefighter pension plan)," Jones said in a tweet.