Town bails on civil service hiring system

Amid arguments that the current system is cumbersome and unfair, favoring those “in the know’’ and discouraging diversity, 144 Town Meeting members voted last month to exempt from civil service all town jobs except police officers and firefighters.

The move would affect everything from urban planners and school food-service workers to payroll clerks and building inspectors. Current employees would be grandfathered into the civil service system, which was created in the late 1800s in an effort to prevent patronage hires and insulate public employees from political pressures.

The Brookline vote occurred over the protests of labor leaders, who admitted that the state system was slow and ineffective. But, they said, the system was improving, with the time required for hearings shrinking.

“We know there are problems with the system, but that’s no excuse to scrap it entirely,’’ said James Durkin, with AFSCME Council 93, the union that represents many town and school workers. “It’s dispiriting to see this coming out of a progressive town like Brookline.’’

If the exemption is approved by the Legislature, Brookline would join a number of municipalities that have petitioned for full or partial exemptions from civil service regulations.

The list among area communities includes school secretaries in Arlington, all clerical positions outside the Public Works Department in Billerica, and all positions except police and fire in Burlington. Weston has dropped out of the system entirely.

Brookline is the only town now seeking an exemption, according to Catherine Noyes, director of the civil service unit in the state’s Human Resources Division.

Under the civil service system, public jobs are filled on the basis of test results, with applicants placed on a hiring list in the order of their score. Over the years, however, the system dealing with employees other than police and firefighters has bogged down, critics say. Tests have not been given regularly, and hiring can take many months more than for positions not covered by civil service.

Critics say that, since the dictates of the system are not widely known, the pool of applicants on hiring lists is small and not representative of the larger population. Also, they say that the system’s protections against unjust firing are now duplicated by state and federal laws and collective bargaining agreements.

The Brookline proposal would continue using civil service tests for positions in the Police and Fire departments, with officials saying that the system works well for public safety employees.

“It’s not nearly as cumbersome’’ as on the civilian side, said Sandra DeBow, human resources director in Brookline. “The lists are regularly released, exams given.’’

Brookline adopted civil service in 1894, just 10 years after Massachusetts became one of the first states to set up the special hiring system for public jobs.

The Town Meeting vote last month followed a six-year study by a volunteer board examining the system and its effects on town hiring practices.

The study concluded that Brookline’s system was antiquated and inefficient, describing it as “dysfunctional in the extreme; in fact working in opposition to the intent of the law with one exception - Public Safety (Police and Fire).’’

Yet some say that the civil service system continues to function fine in Brookline for all municipal positions.

Heather Deluca was hired as a clerk in the town’s Highway Department eight years ago, after scoring well on a civil service exam.

“I personally think it’s good,’’ she said. “The test establishes minimum requirements.’’

Recalling friends from school who landed jobs in the private sector just because they were related to the right person, Deluca said she felt her hiring, by contrast, was fair and unbiased.

“You can’t just hire friends or family,’’ she said.

According to state official Noyes, of the state’s 351 municipalities, 119 have never signed on for civil service for positions outside of police and fire; 182 don’t have police on civil service; and 242 don’t have firefighters in the system. By law, cities and towns with fewer than 100,000 residents are not required to use civil service, she said.

Worcester has had an exemption from civil service for most of its administrative positions since 2005, a situation that Kathleen Johnson, the city’s acting director of human resources, said has made the hiring process easier.

Johnson said she appreciates not having to take the top three candidates off an exam list, allowing her to consider other relevant experience and skills, like the ability to speak a second language, that are not factored into eligibility tests.

She believes the resulting hires are “more dynamic and diverse,’’ although the switch is too new for her to be able to offer data. Worcester, like other Massachusetts municipalities, has been laying off more than it’s been hiring since 2005.

Each municipality under civil service is also required to maintain a labor service list for blue-collar jobs. The task, said Arlington Town Manager Brian Sullivan, eats up administrative time, and the list does not guarantee that the best candidates are coming forward, only that the first qualified and available person on the list will be the first hired.

“It’s hard enough to get people to work in water treatment without that,’’ said William Williams, Billerica’s town manager, who stepped down from the job last week. Many possible applicants don’t know about the town-maintained labor list, he said, or how it functions.

The state’s Human Resources Division is responsible for administering tests covering white-collar jobs, but its resources have been curtailed after repeated budget cuts over the last decade. In an e-mail, Noyes said that the state hasn’t given such a test since 2003. In those cases where the town was still able to hire off a list of state-tested applicants, the process took at least 10 months, according to the Brookline report.

And while tests were once administered for dozens of jobs - everything from zookeepers to pipe fitters - some jobs that need filling now, like town webmaster and information technology director, do not exist in the state manual, last updated in 1974, Brookline’s DeBow said.

Durkin, with the local American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees council, said that such problems could be addressed now that the state has a reform-minded governor in office.

“The test is just one component of the civil service system,’’ he said. “They have made progress in other components.’’

Ronny Sydney, a former Brookline state representative, agreed.

“Civil service hasn’t done us any harm,’’ she said. She acknowledged that the current system is not administering tests, but said it is being reformed. “Wait a year and see if we get changes.’’

But state Representative Frank Smizik told Brookline’s Town Meeting that he doubts, in the current fiscal crisis, the Legislature would be willing to give civil service the needed funds.

“It would cost tens of millions of dollars,’’ he said. “I polled my colleagues on the Hill; I heard no interest in reinstating civil service.’’