Columbus voters change civil service scoring, open meeting rules in charter
While Columbus voters overwhelmingly approved amending the city's charter Tuesday to change the way city employees are hired, dropping a century-old requirement that bands of competitive test scores be used to determine merit among all job-seekers receiving a passing grade on the exam, some technical changes must still be made before any police and fire personnel get hired under the new system.
"The charter has changed, but the rules have not," Glenn McEntyre, a spokesman for the city Public Safety Department which oversees the safety forces, said in an email Wednesday.
With 100% of precincts reporting in unofficial results, the charter amendment passed 74% to 26%. But any related rule changes governing how competitive test scores are used to give preference to higher-scoring candidates must be confirmed by three-member Civil Service Commission, McEntyre said.
Those changes are expected to be presented to the Commission in December, which if approved, potentially would allow the next police officer hiring list to be established under the changes in early January. That list would be used to fill a proposed April, 2023 police recruit class, McEntyre said.
Voters also approved a charter change that would allow the city to the city council to craft rules for when and how elected and appointed officials could attend and vote at meetings via remote electronic communications equipment. The practice was allowed by state lawmakers during the COVID-19 pandemic but have since rescinded, returning to an Open Meetings Act requirement that officials must physically attend meetings to vote.
That charter measure passed 76% to 24% with all precincts reporting in unofficial returns.
City Council President Shannon Hardin said voters saw both issues as just "common sense modernization," with the Civil Service changes giving the city the "ability to hire and move folks up through the ranks in equitable way."
"We're grateful to the voters," Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said at a Democratic Party celebration in Franklinton, also thanking poll workers who worked a long day with strong turnout and long lines −which the lengthy Columbus ballot, with five bond issues and three charter amendments, may have contributed to.
Under a proposal currently before the Columbus Charter Review Commission submitted by Civil Service Commission Executive Director Amy DeLong, city voters were asked to approve changes to the 1914 charter to do away with giving preference in job hiring to the highest-scoring applicants.
The city charter previously required municipal workers not in a policy or political role, called "classified" employees, to be "competitive" hires, selected based on "the merit and fitness of applicants by competitive examinations," according to the city charter.
DeLong insisted that hiring would still be competitive, because everyone would still take a test and need a passing score for employment consideration.
Backers said the change would improve diversity. But two recent studies – including one that cost the city $75,600 and focused solely on the Division of Police – found that if minorities and women aren’t getting jobs, it’s not because of their test scores. Black police candidates performed as well or better than the average on the oral test, the only remaining competitive part of the civil service test, while both studies found that women scored better on average.
In fact, one of the studies didn’t recommend doing away with competitive testing but rather completely stripping the mayor’s administration of all officer-hiring processes, placing them instead under the city’s independent Civil Service Commission, which it found to have more objective methods.
Former Columbus Mayor Greg Lashutka, a Republican, came out in opposition to the changes in a letter to The Dispatch, saying the city was moving away from ensuring the best possible job candidates are selected to respond to emergency police and fire calls, when citizens' lives can be on the line.
But voters overwhelmingly disagreed.
"They are issues that aren't controversial, right?" said City Council Member Nick Bankston, also attending the post-election Democratic Party celebration to watch poll results come in. "They are standard issues of how we modernize our city's charter, and so I think it's great that the voters of Columbus also saw that.
"So it was a great night for the city of Columbus."
wbush@gannett.com
@ReporterBush
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Lower test score? Don't worry, Columbus voters got you covered
