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Kelly v. City of New Haven9/27/2005
e personnel director to prepare, conduct and score examinations. Id., § 166 (j). This authority, however, does not include authorization to act in a way that is unreasonable, arbitrary or illegal. See Wallingford v. Dept. of Public Health, 262 Conn. 758, 765 n.6, 817 A.2d 644 (2003) (" lthough the court may not substitute its own conclusions for those of the administrative board, it retains the ultimate obligation to determine whether the administrative action was unreasonable, arbitrary, illegal or an abuse of discretion" [internal quotation marks omitted]); Office of Consumer Counsel v. Dept. of Public Utility Control, 246 Conn. 18, 43, 716 A.2d 78 (1998) (court will not uphold defendant department's practice if defendant has abused its discretion or exceeded its statutory authority).
One express limitation on the defendants' authority is the manner prescribed for the selection of candidates for promotion under the rule of three. Section 160 of article XXX of the New Haven charter provides that promotions are to be made "from those applicants with the three highest scores . . . ." It is unclear from this language whether the defendants may consider, as they contend, all those applicants with the three highest scores, irrespective of how those scores are derived and how many applicants share the three scores, as long as their scoring methodology is rational. As support for their contention, the defendants point to the 1993 revision to the charter, which they claim removed the limitation on their authority to chose among three applicants. Beckwith, by contrast, points to the civil service rule that remains in effect limiting the defendants' authority to choosing among three applicants as evidence that the 1993 amendment did not expand the defendants' discretion. We turn, therefore, to the genealogy and legislative history of the charter's rule of three.
In 1909, the city adopted the rule of three in its charter, requiring that promotions be made "from those applicants, not exceeding three, who shall stand highest of those who shall have passed the examination." New Haven Charter, art. XXX, § 190 (1909). In 1972, the problem of how to resolve tie scores was brought before the civil service board. The minutes from an October, 1972 special meeting of the civil service board indicate that the board voted "that in the future eligible lists upon which there are ties shall be resolved by giving to all of the tied candidates the same chronological number." Thus, in accordance with the civil service board's vote, potentially more than three candidates could be considered for a vacancy if there were ties among the top three scores. Neither the civil service rules, nor, more significantly, the charter, however, was amended in any way to reflect this change in practice.
In 1991, the charter revision commission held meetings to discuss potential changes to the civil service provisions of the charter. There was substantial discussion concerning the rule of three and the resolution of tie scores. The vice president of the police officers union advocated a strict application of the rule of three because of his organization's concern that subjectivity was seeping back into the city's evaluation process, while others advanced proposals focusing on significantly expanding the city's discretion in selecting candidates. In particular, the city's affirmative action commission advocated deleting the rule of three altogether, leaving such matters to the discretion of the civil service board and allowing an affirmative action officer to seek out minority candidates without the constraints of the civil service system. Another proposal was to expand the board of police commissioners' discretion in selecting indiv
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