Judge bars city's pass-fail exams

05/26/2006

Judge bars city’s pass-fail exams

William Kaempffer , Register Staff

NEW HAVEN — A Superior Court judge ruled this week that the city’s longstanding hiring practices in the Fire Department violated the law. In a nine-page decision, Judge Jon C. Blue determined that the city’s custom of holding pass-fail exams in the police and fire departments violated its own charter, and Blue barred it from the practice.

The order came as no surprise since Blue came to the same conclusion five years ago in a nearly identical lawsuit. Blue blasted the practice then as "blatant lawlessness," but because the ruling wasn’t binding, the city continued the practice.

Last year, Naugatuck resident Matthew Hurley, who applied for a job on the Fire Department in 2004 but wasn’t hired, filed the second suit.

While Blue ruled in Hurley’s favor, he didn’t compel the city to offer Hurley a position as the plaintiff had hoped. Even if the city had followed the charter, Blue reasoned, Hurley probably wouldn’t have been ranked high enough on a civil service list to get hired.

Hurley’s attorney, Karen Torre, said she was disappointed that the order didn’t get Hurley onto the department but said she was glad that the city finally was called to account for a flagrantly illegal practice.

"At last there is a final judgment against this mayor and his administration, and this lawlessness will have to end once and for all," said Torre, a frequent critic of Mayor John DeStefano’s administration. "Unless, of course, the mayor will now resort to a contempt of court as his next strategy for preserving his corrupt civil service system."

Corporation Counsel Thomas Ude Jr. said the city already committed to stop the now-illegal practice even before the trial. He disagreed with the characterization that the city flouted Blue’s first decision knowing the practice was illegal. Ude said in 2001, the city disagreed with Blue’s analysis and probably would have appealed if it had gone to final judgment.

Since then, he said, there’s been new case law — including a state Supreme Court decision in another New Haven civil service case — that prompted the city to change its approach.

"We thought it the more prudent course. The city had committed to changing the process by which people were hired in the police and fire departments before the order was issued," Ude said.

In this decision, Blue used gentler tones than in 2001, but firmly scolded the city for evading the "clear mandate" of the charter for decades and then admitting the practice "to the thoroughly astonished court."

In November 2005, after pretrial attempts to have the case thrown out failed and a trial date was set, the city reversed course in what Torre called a transparent attempt to pre-empt a trial.

The city canceled the existing civil service list in December and later committed to voluntarily stop the pass-fail practice.

The change of heart prompted Blue to quote a 1791 biography of Samuel Johnson in his decision: "(W)hen a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

On the eve of trial, the city attempted to have the case thrown out as moot, which Blue also rejected.

The city had been hiring public safety employees for decades as "supernumerary police" and "substitute fire personnel," positions that are noted in the charter, but critics say don’t really exist. Those designations permit the city to conduct the pass-fail exams, instead of ranked tests.

Critics say the city’s pass-fail process was used as a political tool to get friends and political supporters city jobs and bolster the mayor’s political power base.

William Kaempffer can be reached at 789-5727 or wkaempffer@nhregister.com.