Amid government layoffs, budget cuts and looming contract talks, the state's top labor relations official is stepping down.

Ronald Yank told Department of Personnel Administration staff on Tuesday that he's leaving. The Brown administration, which hadn't named a successor to the key post as of late Tuesday afternoon, declined to make Yank available for an interview.

Department spokeswoman Lynelle Jolley said Yank is leaving "around the end of this month."

Yank's exit caught union leaders off-guard and comes at a key moment in labor relations. DPA handles a wide variety of employment issues from employee disputes to salaries to training.

"Mr. Yank's departure came as a surprise to all of us and we wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors," said CCPOA spokesman JeVaughn Baker in an email Tuesday after the news broke. "We are hopeful that the incoming director is reasonable and possesses the requisite fairness that the position requires."

DPA negotiators bargain contracts with a dozen unions that cover some 190,000 state employees. Four of those union contracts expire in July.

Yank also has been responsible for pushing Brown's initiative to merge DPA with the State Personnel Board, blending two organizations and cultures with overlapping duties and a history of clashing.

And with Brown's realignment plan shrinking the state's prison population, Yank won agreements with labor to streamline the state's cumbersome layoff process at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation while making it easier for workers there in danger of losing their jobs to transfer.

Some experts have suggested the CDCR plan is a model for downsizing other parts of state government.

Yank, a retired labor lawyer, was an early Brown appointee last year.

Critics said it was a make-good to the unions that supported Brown's campaign, particularly the correctional officers. Yank counted CCPOA among his clients before he retired from Carroll, Burdick & McDonough LLP. His son, Jonathan Yank, also is a lawyer based in the firm's San Francisco office and has handled CCPOA cases.

Yank countered that he would bring tough love to the job, repair the relations damaged during epic labor battles with GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

A few months after he took over, Yank closed contract talks with CCPOA and five other unions that had refused to come to terms with Schwarzenegger.

This year, he ended a long-running pay dispute with CCPOA and settled furlough lawsuits with SEIU Local 1000 and the state's attorneys' union. CCPOA and the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association also recently dropped their furlough litigation.

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Call Jon Ortiz, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1043.

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