Unsatisfied with the pace of implementation of recent civil service reforms in Pennsylvania, state senators Mike Folmer and Randy Vulakovich are taking another crack at trying to fix what they see as a system in dire need of repair.
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Folmer, a Republican from Lebanon, and Vulakovich, a Republican from Glenshaw, introduced legislation in 2016 that was enacted to “bring some modest modernizations to the Pennsylvania Civil Service Commission,” according to a memo they circulated to their fellow senators. Act 69 of 2016 allows the Civil Service Commission to notify applicants to civil service jobs of openings or tests by email; expand the “rule of three,” which previously limited how many applicants a hiring agency would see; and allow the commission to post actual job vacancies instead of just lists of job classifications.
“Despite these reforms, we continue to hear horror stories about the civil service hiring process, namely about how long it takes to go through the process,” Vulakovich said during a recent hearing contemplating further civil service reforms. “As such, we have introduced Senate Bill 1037 to move merit-based hiring away from the commission and into the Office of Administration.”
During the hearing, Folmer and Vulakovich heard from the Civil Service commissioners and from the head of the Department of Administration, Secretary Sharon Minnich, as well as veterans and disabled advocates and representatives of local governments.
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Chairman Bryan Lentz of the Civil Service Commission was emphatic in rejecting the idea that his agency had done anything inappropriate in its response to the 2016 reforms.
“I’m happy to report, as I have reported to you in our private meetings, that we have enacted all of those changes that you put in place,” he said. “We have expanded the rule of three, we have notified over 60,000 people via email of their test results since that legislation was passed, and ironically,” vacancy-based hiring went live this week.
Lentz made a forceful defense of the importance of his agency, arguing that without an independent Civil Service Commission, Pennsylvania would return to the long-gone days of widespread and corrupt patronage hiring.
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“If you took it away from an independent agency, hiring would be subject to manipulation by elected officials,” Lentz said. “That’s the whole reason we have a Civil Service Commission, is to prevent the spoils system, prevent people that win elections from controlling who gets what jobs. This Senate bill gives it to a political arm of the government as opposed to an independent, non-political arm of the government.”
But Vulakovich, despite Lentz’s assurances that the 2016 reforms were in full swing, still perceived defiance from the commissioners as to the purpose of those measures.
“It was not smooth going after legislation was passed,” he said. “You were resistant on almost everything.”
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When it came to be Minnich’s turn to testify, she talked at length about the improvements that the Department of Administration has made in the segments of government hiring it oversees. Speaking in support of SB1037, she said it would dramatically streamline the government hiring process, making it significantly easier both for applicants and for the various government agencies.
“Applicants who are looking to find a job really do still have a confusing process,” she said. “And I think what Senate Bill 1037 does, it helps to transform and align the process for both the applicants and the agency.”
David Denotaris, the executive director of the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation within the Department of Labor, talked about how difficult disabled job applicants have found it to even try to get jobs with the state of Pennsylvania vs. doing the same with private companies.
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“In the past three years, OVR has assisted over 27,000 residents with disabilities in finding real jobs with real pay in their community,” he said. “Only 200 of them, or a little less than one percent, were employed by the Commonwealth.”
Denotaris said that the Civil Service Commission has struggled to accommodate for disabled applicants, and that in his experience the Office of Administration had done a much better job.
Senate Bill 1037 is pending with the Senate’s State Government Committee, where Folmer is the chairman.
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