Paul Bass Photo
Commissioner Negrón weighs in against the idea.
Rather than start all over recruiting firefighters, the Harp administration is seeking permission to extend a current list of applicants for a third year — a move that will require changing civil-service rules.
The administration would need to obtain that rule change by the end of July.
The public will get a chance to weigh in first on a question that balances good-government concerns about political favoritism, on the one hand, against efficiency — filling public-safety jobs promptly and saving taxpayers money — on the other.
The Civil Service Commission plans to meet this week to formalize a proposed change to its rule book that would allow commissioners, on a case-by-case basis, to extend to three years the duration of lists of approved candidates for entry-level police or fire positions. The lists rank the applicants who scored passing grades on recruitment tests. Officials draw from the lists in extending conditional job offers, then further scrutinize candidates for admission to a training academy.
By law a list expires after a year. The Civil Service Commission can extend the list’s expiration date by a year if asked by city officials, and the commission routinely does that. But it currently may not do that for a third year.
The commission plans to hold a public hearing on the proposed change in June before voting on it.
It is taking up the issue at the request of city Chief Administrative Officer Mike Carter.
In a letter to the commission, Carter noted that the current list of approved potential entry-level firefighters expires at the end of July. The commission has already extended it once. (Click here to read the letter.)
The city has been scrambling to fill firefighter positions in part to rein in overtime costs, in addition to protecting public safety. It has made strides with the latest list, seating two classes. It expects to seat a third class in July. But it still has dozens of openings.
It got a late start using the list. Delays in background checks, among other problems, prevented officials from seating the first class for a full year after the approval of the list, Carter wrote. He wrote that they’ve since improved the system and can reasonably seat a class within six months.
It cost the city over a year and more than $300,000 to test and then screen applicants, according to Carter. Meanwhile, the list produced an unusual bounty of passing candidates: 1,100.
So it would make sense to continue drawing from that list to continue seating classes rather than start all over, spending all that money again along with another 12 to 18 months, Carter argued. Unless the city uses the list, vacancies and overtime costs will mount again, he predicted.
“With the initial 43 new firefighters who completed their training in late December 2013, the impact on overtime is a reduction from a high of $264,000 per week down to $116,000 per week,” Carter wrote. “A second class will yield even more overtime reductions and fill vacancies so that the department is not spending a significant amount of time each day filling vacant positions on shifts. It is in the City’s financial interest to continue to realize these savings by using the current list….
“In the history of the New Haven Fire Department, we have never had such an extensive list of eligible candidates for the entry level positions. Why let it go to waste when we are just now reaching the 200 and 300 level candidates whose scores are still very high?”
Leasley Negrón (pictured at the top of the story) ticked off six reasons not to.
She did that last week at the monthly meeting of the Civil Service Commission, on which she serves. She said she had thought about the question in depth since the previous monthly meeting. She brought a two-page single-spaced printed statement to Tuesday’s meeting at 200 Orange St. detailing her concerns about Carter’s request, including:
• It would leave out people newly interested in applying for firefighter jobs since the last tests two years ago.
• Many of those currently on the list may no longer want the job, “as a result of having established careers elsewhere, most likely due to the amount of time passed since date of exam.”
• It could create “the unintended impression” that officials have an unexpressed “underlying reason” for the change.
• It could cause problems with other departments that might like to draw from recently expired lists.
• The commission would need to “rush” to a decision to accommodate the request.
• Why not look at changing the entire rule book if “the board is interested in updating” this one rule?
If the commission does change the rule, it should make the change effective next January to remove any “unintended impressions,” Negrón argued.
“I want to make note that I am not in favor of extending that list,” Negrón told her colleagues at the meeting. She said she fears “opening up a can of worms.”
Municipal union leaders present at the commission meeting also argued for keeping the system as is.
“The cream of the crop is done at the beginning of the list,” argued AFSCME Local 884 President Doreen Rhodes. Firefighters union President Jimmy Kottage (at center in photo) said the rule change would send the city down a “slippery slope” and contradict the intention of civil service — to ensure hiring based on merit, not political connection. He said the city has time to administer new tests to prepare a list needed to fill an anticipated 30 or so eventual openings.
City human resources chief Stephen Librandi (at left) and city attorney Kathleen Foster responded that entry-level fire and police tests differ from other tests, such as promotional exams. The latter draw a smaller pool of applicants. And those not hired within a year or two often find employment elsewhere because they’re already in their chosen field. Foster argued that many people applying for rookie cop or firefighter positions are changing careers and are more likely to remain interested in the job.
Because of the unusual size of the firefighter list, “logic tells you there are very qualified people still on” it, Librandi said.
“I am not sure there’s a whole lot of difference” between applicants who scored an 85 or a 95 on the test, he added.
Commission Chair James Williams said he wanted to put the question to a public hearing — and to do so with enough time to have a rule change cover the current firefighter list.
“We’ll do the public hearing and see what happens,” he said.
“I’m willing to do that,” said Negrón. “I don’t want to shut anything down.”
Commissioner Negron's points are irrelevant if the entire pool is still judged on merit and if the test rigor remains standardized.
However, one does wonder why the city would seek to deepen an already deep pool. If a batch of retirements or some other remarkable attrition occurred and the city felt the need to have more applicants on deck, they should design a numerical trigger that could temporarily expand an applicant pool relative to the size and anticipated needs of a department. This also assumes that the rigor of the test remains standardized.