City ends pass/fail exams for cops, firefighters

04/10/2006

William Kaempffer , Register Staff

NEW HAVEN — The city has scrapped its longstanding, and some critics say illegal, hiring practice for police officers and firefighters. The move comes years after a judge issued a scathing opinion slamming the hiring practice and as a fresh lawsuit filed against it goes to trial.

At issue is the city’s long-held practice of holding pass/fail civil service exams for the two public safety departments, a policy city officials contended was legal under the city charter.

A civil trial is scheduled to begin today for Naugatuck resident Matthew Hurley, who sued the city in 2005 after he wasn’t hired for a job in the fire department.

In court papers, a city attorney argues that the trial isn’t necessary because the administration already has committed to stopping the practice in question and further argues that Hurley lacks legal standing to sue.

Hurley’s attorney, Karen Torre, responded with a blistering court brief assailing what she described as another dishonest ploy by the city to avoid court intervention on its hiring practices.

The lawsuit, however, asserts the charter requires the city to create ranked lists of candidates and hire individuals with the highest scores.

The suit claims the city illegally circumvents its competitive hiring laws for the police and fire departments in favor of a system of cronyism, nepotism and political favoritism.

While city officials have defended the pass/fail process, in March, the city’s top attorney advised that the practice be halted, citing new legal precedent from other cases.

In December 2005, the city’s Civil Service Commission also voted to kill the fire department hiring list that Hurley was on. The list would have been valid through August.

That renders the lawsuit moot, the city contends.

"Mr. Hurley’s claim has to do with his position on an eligibility list that has expired and that list was compiled under a process that the city has determined that the city is not going to continue with," Corporation Counsel Thomas W. Ude said. "There’s no need to take up judicial resources."

Torre responded that the city invalidated the list and pledged to abandon the pass/fail method in a calculated effort to dodge a lawsuit, not because of new case law.

She likened the effort to a battering husband going to court and claiming the action is moot "because I’m promising I won’t hit her anymore, so you can’t issue the restraining order."

The city charter requires competitive hiring of most employees through civil service examinations in which candidates are ranked by their scores. However, it contains an exemption for "supernumerary police" and "substitute firefighters."

For decades, the city has hired entry-level firefighters and police officers under those classifications, conducting pass/fail exams that created large pools of equally weighted candidates who scored 70 percent or better.

Torre says the positions of supernumerary police and substitute firefighters don’t really exist, but are utilized to allow city administrations almost unlimited discretion to hire based on political connections instead of qualifications.

Another critic of the process is Superior Court Judge Jon C. Blue, who will preside in the Hurley case.

In 2001, in a separate lawsuit, Blue called the pass/fail practice a "charade" and "blatant lawlessness, by persons sworn to uphold the law."

That case never reached a verdict and the city continued the practice.

The city civil service process has a history of being under legal scrutiny. In the 1990s, minority firefighters successfully sued over promotional practices they claimed benefited white firefighters. In 2004, the state Supreme Court upheld a decision requiring the city to hire a special master to monitor promotions in the fire department.

In 2005, the state’s high court upheld a decision that the city illegally employed a civil service regulation to allow city department heads wider discretion in making promotions in the police department.

Candidates will now be ranked by their actual test scores and the city must hire the candidates from the highest scores.