"The whole point
is that you're not supposed to just be able to hire your buddy," said
Mr. Cheliotes. ...Crains NY
Leonie Haimson reports:
Fascinating story below – apparently under Bloomberg, the city hired more than 37,000 employees w/out going through the proper Civil Service process, including passing required exams; more than 20,000 of them remain. According to court order and a new state law they have to pass these exams or be replaced by end of 2016. More than 4,000 of these employees remaining are at DOE. Does anyone know what sorts of positions these people hold? 4,000 is a lot of educrats; are they also teachers? We’ve lost more than 5,000 teachers since 2007.
My take? Of course the Manhattan Institute and Crain's consider these political appointees Brains rather than Brainless.
Brain drain looms for de Blasio
Layoffs for city workers have begun and could run into the thousands.
October 5, 2014 12:01 a.m.
"The civil-service system was a progressive reform to ensure good government—but that was 100 years ago," said Steve Malanga, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Photo: Associated Press
This Week in Crain's:
October 6, 2014 Download
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20141005/POLITICS/141009915/brain-drain-looms-for-de-blasio#
The de Blasio administration is facing a major brain drain as a court
decision, civil-service rules and state law will force it to shed
thousands of experienced middle managers across dozens of city agencies.
The
upheaval has already begun in some quarters: A city source said the
Department of Design and Construction started letting employees go in
August and September, and a spokesman for the agency confirmed that 15
had lost their jobs last month.
But the real bloodletting will occur over the next two years.
This
week, Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration will submit a plan to the
state Civil Service Commission detailing how the city will slash
thousands of "provisional" employees from its payroll. The city must
replace most of them with "permanent" employees by the end of 2016.
Some
of these provisional workers—who, as their titles suggest, were
supposed to be temporary—have been on the city payroll for years.
The
state constitution dictates that governmental appointments be based on
"merit and fitness," and for many job classifications that is determined
by scores on civil-service exams. In many cases, only the top three
scorers are allowed to be interviewed for a position.
Circumventing the system
The
longstanding policy was designed to root out political patronage. But
former Mayor Michael Bloomberg felt hamstrung by it because the exam
scores reflect knowledge of agency procedures and other arcane facts but
not necessarily work experience, managerial skills, temperament and
other qualities.
The mayor therefore had his
agencies circumvent the system by hiring "provisional" employees. By
2007, nearly 37,000 were swelling the ranks of city government,
occupying more than 19% of the "competitive" city job titles that were
supposed to be filled based on exam scores.
"The
civil-service system was a progressive reform to ensure good
government—but that was 100 years ago," said Steve Malanga, a senior
fellow at the Manhattan Institute. "Now there's far more sophisticated
technology and different types of positions. But you may still want this
kind of test for someone working in the Sanitation Department. There
are no easy answers to this."
Mr. Bloomberg's
work-around was dealt a major blow by a 2007 court decision in a case
pitting Long Beach, L.I., against CSEA, a labor union representing
employees in the town. The court found it unlawful for municipalities in
the state to retain provisional employees for more than nine months.
To
be in substantial compliance with the ruling, New York City needed to
slash the portion of competitive jobs held by provisional workers to
5%—down to about 9,500. In 2008, the Bloomberg administration developed a
plan to cut the provisional ranks to just 3,300 within five years. But
it fell well short: As of late last year, nearly 22,500 provisional
employees were still on the payroll, according to a city report.
'As fast as they could'
"They
went as fast as they reasonably could," argued one source close to the
process, alluding to the impact that wholesale personnel changes would
have had on city operations.
Data released late last
year show the Department of Education had more than 4,000 provisional
employees, while the Parks Department, Housing Authority, Human
Resources Administration and Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
each had more than 1,000. Current provisional employees are being
encouraged by their agencies to take civil-service exams.
Many
of these provisional employees are union members, said Arthur
Cheliotes, president of the Communications Workers Local 1180. Still,
public-sector labor leaders chafed because the provisional workers
lacked civil-service protections and were afraid to call out managers'
misdeeds, including contracting abuses, he said.
Unions
also felt the Bloomberg administration was stifling the upward mobility
of civil-service workers by hiring provisional managers rather than
promoting from the lower ranks.
"It used to be that
these kinds of appointments came from the political clubs. [Then] they
started coming from the country clubs," wisecracked Mr. Cheliotes, who
chairs the civil-service committee for the Municipal Labor Committee, an
umbrella group for city unions.
Unions push city to act
Labor
interests, which had felt that the Bloomberg administration dragged its
feet in complying with the court ruling, pressed the state Legislature
to accelerate the process. This year, two Brooklyn lawmakers, Republican
state Sen. Martin Golden and Democratic Assemblyman Peter Abbate,
advanced bills giving the city a deadline, and after negotiations with
the de Blasio administration, a deal was struck to give it until the end
of 2016. (Labor sources said the administration, fearing rapid turnover
would disrupt agencies, wanted much more time than it got.)
The
bill also required the city to issue a new plan to achieve compliance.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law in August. On
Oct. 8,
the Department of Citywide Administrative Services is expected to issue
a plan on how the city will comply with the court decision.
An agency deputy commissioner, Julianne Cho, declined to comment until the plan is released.
The department is now headed by a de Blasio appointee, Stacey Cumberbatch. She and Ms. Cho are both Bloomberg holdovers.
Labor
leaders had grumbled that the Bloomberg administration did not schedule
enough civil-service exams and often tried to reclassify provisional
employees' jobs to exempt them from civil-service rules.
The
de Blasio administration, however, has been "vigorous" in giving
civil-service exams, Mr. Cheliotes said. Top scorers can fill jobs
currently held by provisional employees, some of whom have been taking
the tests in an effort to stay on.
"The whole point
is that you're not supposed to just be able to hire your buddy," said
Mr. Cheliotes. "Now there will be an opportunity to take the tests. And
the general public will have as much access to the jobs as anyone else."
A version of this article appears in the
October 6, 2014, print issue of Crain's New York Business.