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Kelly v. City of New Haven9/27/2005
ce Commission, 202 Conn. 28, 34-35, 519 A.2d 67 (1987). Prior to the 1993 amendment to the charter, this court explained the policy behind the rule of three, which "grants a department head the discretion to award a promotional position to any one of the three most qualified candidates. The underlying rationale for the granting of such discretionary power is that the department head should have a limited say in deciding whom he must work with on a daily basis. Certainly, however, no one would dispute that this discretionary power is not validly exercised in the name of merit selection if, in awarding a position, the department head is predisposed to excluding certain candidates from the position based upon factors unrelated to performance capability and compatibility." (Emphasis added.) Hartford v. Board of Mediation & Arbitration, 211 Conn. 7, 17, 557 A.2d 1236 (1989).
It is clear that the result of the defendants' methodology is a significant expansion of its discretion in choosing among the most qualified candidates in a pool of candidates who meet the threshold requirement for promotion. Turning again to the 2000 eligibility list for promotion to sergeant, using the raw scores, the defendants would have been able to choose from no more than four candidates, two of those having tie scores. As we have noted previously, that scenario is typical of the defendants' prior methodology using raw scores. See footnote 24 of this opinion. By contrast, using the rounded scores, the defendant potentially can choose from as many as forty-five candidates. This distinction clearly demonstrates that the rounding of scores, when applied to a process under which candidates with tie scores are treated as one score group warranting equal consideration under the rule of three, violates the spirit and the letter of the civil service provisions of the charter. It is axiomatic that we "construe a statute in a manner that will not thwart its intended purpose or lead to absurd results. . . . We must avoid a construction that fails to attain a rational and sensible result that bears directly on the purpose the legislature sought to achieve. . . . If there are two possible interpretations of a statute, we will adopt the more reasonable construction over one that is unreasonable." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Turner v. Turner, 219 Conn. 703, 712-13, 595 A.2d 297 (1991).
In keeping with the policy objectives of civil service laws, we recently affirmed a civil service commission's discretion to set a three year time in grade requirement before a candidate could be eligible for promotion to a higher rank. Mattera v. Civil Service Commission, 273 Conn. 235, 869 A.2d 637 (2005). Notably, we did not conclude that the civil service commission in that case had unfettered discretion to set a limit, even though the city of Bridgeport's charter simply required candidates to hold a position "for one year or more"; id., 237; rather, we concluded, as did the trial court in that case, that the limit set was not an abuse of the discretion vested in the commission because it was a " `rational standard' " and a " `bona fide employment criterion . . . [that] provides both a stable work force and fiscal stability.' " Id., 239. In other words, we concluded that the civil service commission had exercised its authority in that case in a manner that furthered, rather than undermined, the purposes underlying the civil service system. Specifically, in Mattera, we fully adopted the opinion of the trial court, which reasoned: " t cannot be overemphasized that proper competitive examinations are the cornerstone upon which an effective civil service system is built. Any violation of the law enacted for preserving this system, therefore, is fatal
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