Personnel chief interfered with exam, Nutter says
The city’s departed personnel director inappropriately manipulated the merit-based Civil Service examination process in an attempt to benefit a favored employee, Mayor Nutter’s office said yesterday.
Inspector General Amy Kurland’s office determined that acting Personnel Director Tanya Smith had interfered with a citywide test for management trainees after learning that a favored employee in the Personnel Department, a woman who was not identified, had not passed the exam.
Kurland said that Smith canceled the written part of the exam after determining that her favorite had scored poorly. The rankings were based only on the subjective, oral part of the exam.
Smith defied a call from investigators last fall to freeze the promotion list while the investigation was under way, and “individuals were promoted from this list who may have had an unfair advantage,” the mayor’s office said in a news release. LINK
Neither Kurland nor her predecessor, R. Seth Williams, could say how many promotions were made throughout the city based on the corrupted list.
City’s personnel director resigns
Acting city Personnel Director Tanya Smith resigned yesterday after she was investigated by the city’s inspector general, mayoral spokesman Doug Oliver said.
Oliver declined to describe the investigation or to release further details. Inspector General Amy Kurland declined to comment through a staffer.
“What we are comfortable saying is that there was an investigation, and a recommendation was made to the Civil Service Commission regarding Tanya Smith,” Oliver said.
The three-member commission has the authority to appoint or remove the personnel director. Mayor Nutter announced his appointees to the Civil Service Commission last week. None of Mayor John F. Street’s appointees were retained.
“She was the acting personnel director and was appointed by the previous administration, and the commission can decide to retain her or not,” said commission member Lynda Orfanelli, who also declined to discuss the inspector general’s investigation. LINK
This is a very big deal. For many years now charges of racism and test rigging have pervaded Philadelphia’s civil service system. Many people have said that the system of testing, hiring and promotion are fixed and or corrupted. In light of these developments, today those people may have some reason to say “I told you so”.
First a brief lesson on Civil Service. In principle Civil Service is a good thing. It is supposed to insulate government workers from corruption. Things like bid rigging, bribery, nepotism and so on in theory are eliminated or at least held to a minimum by a system that allows for open competition for jobs and promotions. This at least in theory guarantees that the most qualified people are hired, promoted and insulated from political pressure to look the other way when doing their job or their duty conflicts with the political agenda that often exists in the halls of city government.
Philadelphia’s City Charter in the early 1950’s established just such a system after years of Republican Party machine politics and corruption. Back in those days in order to become say a Policeman or Fireman you paid bribes to the local Committeeman. City jobs were sold like in the infamous Tammany Hall. If you wanted a promotion, same deal. People who were connected to the wheels of city politics moved up competent or not. Of course if you get promoted that way you are beholden to your master.
If your master calls you have to do his bidding. It’s that simple.
So the institution of Civil Service was a breath of fresh air back then. It was thought to be very progressive and the liberals laughed about breaking the Republican stranglehold on the city.
Fast forward sixty years. After at least fifty years of unchecked Democratic control we have in our City Council the worst legislative body in the Western World. Corruption, incompetence, patronage are the rules not the exception in this town. A ballot initiative that was just rammed through allowing Department heads to appoint up to TWELVE deputies without going through civil service just expands the potential for corruption, nepotism and favoritism.
Civil Service deserves a lot of the blame. It has in large part, combined with municipal unions evolved into a system that promotes low standards, rewards incompetence, justifies corruption, enables lethargy, codifies ineptitude, covers up abuses, and stifles initiative. It has become a system where bad employees thrive under it’s protection and good employees suffer from a punishing lack of incentive. When people think of Civil Service they immediately think “Job for life” or “Impossible to get fired”. Close but not 100% correct. You can get fired in this system but more often than not it will be for doing the right thing and if by chance you get fired for cause you’ll most likely win your job back under appeal in arbitration. In short it is a demoralizing blur of a system.
One of the main problems has been in Central Personnel. They make up the hiring exams and promotional tests and hire the testing firms. They are wired very closely to the Mayor and it is collectively believed that they do his bidding. They are largely responsible for the destruction of standards and institution of quotas. Although they swear that they are always above board this story proves they are lying.
It begs the question of how many other tests were rigged? How many more people were pushed through or skipped over unfairly? How many other departments are affected? There should be a MAJOR outcry by the local media over this given the allegations floating around for so many years. But so far this story hasn’t grown legs. I wonder why? Three guesses? Maybe they don’t want to embarrass the new administration. Maybe if the media had done their jobs during the previous administration this wouldn’t be a story now.
It will be interesting to see how this turns out. I’m not holding my breath.
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