Long Beach Resident
09-13-2007, 04:11 PM
Long Beach circumvented court ruling over hirings
BY WILLIAM MURPHY | william.murphy@newsday.com
September 12, 2007
The City of Long Beach improperly created new job titles to get around a Court of Appeals ruling in May that it terminate five workers who were doing jobs that should be held by civil service employees, a state agency has found.
However, the state Civil Service Commission proposed no remedy in its letter to the city dated Aug. 28. Instead, it once again demanded that the city's Civil Service Commission explain the city's actions.
For more than 30 years, the state agency has ranked Long Beach as one of the worst localities in civil service compliance and found that it routinely circumvents civil service rules meant to keep favoritism and politics out of nonmanagement hiring.
The city and its Civil Service Commission have changed job titles and fixed other irregularities repeatedly during those three decades, only to repeat the infractions of civil service laws with the next wave of hiring.
The latest dispute goes back several years and appeared to end in May when the Court of Appeals ruled that five workers - all holding low-level clerical jobs - had to be fired because they had not passed civil service tests, and civil service hiring lists existed for those jobs.
One of the workers retired with a pension after 15 years with the city, and City Manager Edwin Eaton switched job titles on the remaining four. One worker's title was changed from "clerk" to "cashier," for instance, and another was changed from "clerk" to "receptionist."
City Attorney Corey Kln said the action was not a violation of the Court of Appeals ruling because the city fired the workers, then rehired them immediately.
Eaton said at the time that he wanted to give the workers "one more chance. ... Nobody wants to fire them."
The Aug. 28 letter reminded the city it had been "found deficient" in the past, and that it "is not legally authorized to create any new position unless the Long Beach Civil Service Commission classifies the position and the title is approved and certified by the commission."
The chairman of the city's Civil Service Commission, Michael Zummo, said yesterday that the three-member panel had never approved the creation of the four new positions, and he said questions about them should be answered by Eaton.
Eaton said he would not comment because he had not seen the Aug. 28 letter.
BY WILLIAM MURPHY | william.murphy@newsday.com
September 12, 2007
The City of Long Beach improperly created new job titles to get around a Court of Appeals ruling in May that it terminate five workers who were doing jobs that should be held by civil service employees, a state agency has found.
However, the state Civil Service Commission proposed no remedy in its letter to the city dated Aug. 28. Instead, it once again demanded that the city's Civil Service Commission explain the city's actions.
For more than 30 years, the state agency has ranked Long Beach as one of the worst localities in civil service compliance and found that it routinely circumvents civil service rules meant to keep favoritism and politics out of nonmanagement hiring.
The city and its Civil Service Commission have changed job titles and fixed other irregularities repeatedly during those three decades, only to repeat the infractions of civil service laws with the next wave of hiring.
The latest dispute goes back several years and appeared to end in May when the Court of Appeals ruled that five workers - all holding low-level clerical jobs - had to be fired because they had not passed civil service tests, and civil service hiring lists existed for those jobs.
One of the workers retired with a pension after 15 years with the city, and City Manager Edwin Eaton switched job titles on the remaining four. One worker's title was changed from "clerk" to "cashier," for instance, and another was changed from "clerk" to "receptionist."
City Attorney Corey Kln said the action was not a violation of the Court of Appeals ruling because the city fired the workers, then rehired them immediately.
Eaton said at the time that he wanted to give the workers "one more chance. ... Nobody wants to fire them."
The Aug. 28 letter reminded the city it had been "found deficient" in the past, and that it "is not legally authorized to create any new position unless the Long Beach Civil Service Commission classifies the position and the title is approved and certified by the commission."
The chairman of the city's Civil Service Commission, Michael Zummo, said yesterday that the three-member panel had never approved the creation of the four new positions, and he said questions about them should be answered by Eaton.
Eaton said he would not comment because he had not seen the Aug. 28 letter.