March 5, 2008

 

 

City of Milwaukee Hiring Proposal Advances in Senate

Madison—A bill to allow The City of Milwaukee to cast a wider net in hiring civil service positions has advanced in the State Senate.  The Senate Committee on Labor, Elections and Urban Affairs today recommended passage of SB 494 which would allow the Civil Service Commission in Milwaukee to expand its list of eligible applicants to those who have scored ties on their exams.

Currently, the commission has been required to arbitrarily select, for example, only three non-management candidates, even if four or five or more had identical scores that should’ve qualified them for consideration.  “I have reports that, in practice, deserving job seekers who have scored well on exams have been unfairly excluded from consideration simply because their scores were identical to others,” said the bill’s co-sponsor Senator Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee).

This bill allows the commission to correct that unfairness by having latitude to certify any number of eligible candidates ranked highest on the list, and all persons on the list with the same test score must be included on the same certification.  The City of Milwaukee has supported this measure.

The next step for the bill is consideration by the entire Senate.