By David Cruz
Correspondent
The governor has been trying to change the state’s civil service rules almost as long as he’s been in office. The changes in question would have essentially gutted civil service protections, some which have been in place for almost a century. The plaintiffs — two unions and the state Legislature — contend that the governor, who appoints the civil service commission, tried to change the rules in near secrecy.
“They put a notice in the New Jersey Register that they were changing rules and under the system where you change regulations you hold a public hearing,” said Hetty Rosenstein, New Jersey state director for the Communications Workers of America. “They held a public hearing at 3 p.m. in Trenton in almost a closet, a tiny little room, didn’t have any commissioners there, just someone taking notes and then they just passed it, and tried to change 96 different regulations to effectively eliminate the whole merit and fitness promotional system.”
The administration says civil service rules make it hard to encourage towns to consolidate services, or get rid of incompetent workers, or simply manage their departments. In 2011, Gov. Chris Christie complained that the state Legislature was standing in the way of civil service reform, despite promising to work together with him on it.
“The fact is that they’ve done nothing on this issue. It is nothing but hot air and two-page press releases with bullet points. That’s not the way you fix the big things in New Jersey. That’s not the way it gets done,” he said then.
Senate President Steve Sweeney doesn’t remember it the same way. “We didn’t agree,” he said. “It’s not that we didn’t try to work together. We tried to work together on a lot of things. It’s just that we don’t always agree at the end of the day and we do a lot of things that he doesn’t agree with and when he vetoes things and changes things that’s just the nature of the business we’re in.”
The Legislature asserted that it had the power to negate any regulations from the executive branch if they ran counter to “legislative intent.” The state constitution says civil service “appointments and promotions … 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.”
When Christie tried to change that, the Legislature and the unions bucked, hence the court battle.
“The governor was trying to mush all the titles together, not explain what they do or what the qualifications are for the next step and then allow for people to be moved up through the system getting promotions, getting more money without anyone even knowing what they were doing or who was getting them or why they should get them,” concluded Rosenstein.
And the appeals court agreed, saying that the rule changes were unconstitutional and that the Legislature did, in fact, have the power to veto the governor’s changes. The administration could appeal to the state Supreme Court but the Attorney General’s Office had no comment on that today. Sweeney says he’s ready to go to the top court if that’s what it takes.