Leaders of the Democrat-controlled New Jersey state Legislature are threatening legal action to stop new Civil Service rules from going into place, claiming Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s administration is riding roughshod over their earlier objection and the state constitution by putting them into place. The Civil Service Commission, meanwhile, says Democrats are ignoring the law by trying to block regulation changes that were reworked in response to their previous criticism.
___
CIVIL SERVICE
Civil Service is the permanent government workforce. Unlike most of the top officials in state government, the workers don’t change along with the administration. In fact, there are rules intended to protect them from being rewarded or punished based on their political allegiance or cronyism. The state’s Civil Service Commission, which makes and enforces those rules, adopted a change this month that it says would simplify and streamline the process of promoting workers.
___
THE CURRENT SYSTEM
Employees interested in moving up can take exams to determine their place in line among others at their rank in their department for promotions. What is involved varies by job and department. In some cases, the exams include pencil-and-paper tests or interviews, but education and experience is a major component of the ranking. The list remains in place for three years. When a higher-ranking job opens, the state can consider the people with the three highest scores. Military veterans get preference. Hetty Rosenstein, the area director of Communications Workers of America, the largest state-workers union, says the system is “imperfect, but it is legitimate.”
___
THE CHANGE
The new system eliminates the exams for workers within bands, or groups of jobs. Exams would still be required to get hired for a Civil Service job or to get a promotion outside the workers’ current band of jobs.
The band concept is the source of contention.
Peter Lyden, a spokesman for the Civil Service Commission, said workers with similar jobs would be grouped together. He said workers with the same job title but different ranks could also be grouped together. State job titles include, for example, family service specialist trainee, family service specialist 2 and the higher-paid family service specialist 1.
“It’s a merit-based system,” Lyden said. “This just takes away one level of difficulty in doing it.”
The changes would apply only to state government workers, not local employees. Anyone covered by the state’s police and fire pension fund is also exempt.
___
THE POLICY DEBATE
The regulations approved last month do not explain specifically how jobs would be put together in bands. Rosenstein said the state could put broad categories of dozens of job titles into bands. For instance, instead of grouping together family service specialists, it could create a band including practically all human services workers.
Further, she said that while the exams are intended to identify the most qualified workers, the new system would allow managers to promote anyone who meets basic qualifications for the job.
“Doing this in the broad-based the way they’re doing it, this is calamitous,” Rosenstein said. “It’s an open invitation to corruption and cronyism.”
___
THE LEGAL QUESTIONS
The Civil Service Commission last year proposed a regulation to allow banding, a concept already used in some departments and the state Judiciary.
In party-line votes, the Democrat-controlled Legislature in December approved a joint resolution finding the proposed regulations violated legislative intent and the state constitution, which says Civil Service appointments “shall be made according to merit and fitness to be ascertained, as far as practicable, by examination, which, as far as practicable, shall be competitive.”
The commission made several changes to its proposed regulations in response to the joint resolution, including spelling out that veterans would still have preference, and reintroduced them later in December.
Lawmakers voted to invalidate the commission’s first proposal but didn’t take up the second. As a result, the revamped regulations were adopted.
Now, legislative leaders are threatening legal action to block their implementation. The Civil Service Commission, which is appointed by Christie, says the Legislature should have considered the new version before voting to invalidate the first proposal.
The regulations are set to take effect June 2.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.