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Kelly v. City of New Haven9/27/2005
because it weakens the system of competitive selection which is the basis of civil service legislation. . . . Strict compliance is necessarily required to uphold the sanctity of the merit system. . . . [It is] trict, not technical, compliance [that] is required. . . . Only rational results are allowed. . . .
"As has been the rule during the last sixty years of litigation, the [city] must strictly comply with its mandate to promote a fair and effective civil service system. The object of providing for civil service examinations is to secure more efficient employees, promote better government, eliminate as far as practicable the element of partisanship and personal favoritism, protect the employees and the public from the spoils system and secure the appointment to public positions of those whose merit and fitness have been determined by proper examination. . . . Therefore any violation of an ordinance enacted for the purpose of preserving that efficiency is fatal because it weakens the system of competitive selection which is the basis of civil service legislation." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Mattera v. Civil Service Commission, 49 Conn. Sup. 224, 231-33, 870 A.2d 483 (2004); see Mattera v. Civil Service Commission, supra, 273 Conn. 239.
Our holding in Mattera is only the most recent in a line of appellate cases which underscores that the authority of appointed boards must be exercised in conformity with the policy underlying a city's civil service legislation. For example, in Resnick v. Civil Service Commission, supra, 156 Conn. 32-33, this court concluded that a civil service board could not ask questions relating to an applicant's religion even if those questions were not part of the formal examination process because substantial compliance with provisions forbidding test questions regarding race and religion was not sufficient. Rather, strict compliance is required where the legislative intent is manifest in light of the purposes of the statute. Id. Similarly, in New Haven Firebird Society v. Board of Fire Commissioners, 32 Conn. App. 585, 591-92, 630 A.2d 131, cert. denied, 228 Conn. 902, 634 A.2d 295 (1993), the Appellate Court held that the city of New Haven did not have the authority to construe its civil service rules to allow it to designate candidates for promotion in advance of a vacancy, even though the defendant firefighters' union contended that the practice facilitated filling expected vacancies. Citing to the principles we later underscored in Mattera v. Civil Service Commission, supra, 273 Conn. 239, the Appellate Court concluded that such a construction of the rules was not reasonable, noting that its "conclusion is forged by the deeply rooted policies that support civil service examinations." New Haven Firebird Society v. Board of Fire Commissioners, supra, 592.
By contrast, in the present case, the trial court made a finding of fact that the city's change in methodology was implemented solely for the purpose of increasing its discretion. The evidence clearly bears out that, whatever the defendants' intent, the result is broad discretion to choose among a large pool of candidates for each vacancy. The rules, however, clearly are designed to allow the defendants limited discretion in the selection of candidates--in essence, allowing it to pass over a candidate who may lack the personal attributes necessary for the position despite obtaining a passing test score. When a methodology is implemented that allows for large groups of candidates to be passed over, as under the defendants' current methodology, the risk is greatly enhanced that such a methodology may become a subterfuge for discrimination and favoritism, in contravention of the purp
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