Long Beach Civil Service Commission submits progress report

The Long Beach Civil Service Commission submitted a progress report to the state Civil Service Commission at the May 1 deadline.  

David Ernest, a public information director for the state CSC, said that the state commission is reviewing the progress report and was expected to address the report at its next meeting on May 19, after the Herald went to press on Tuesday. “It’s being reviewed by staff and there is a presentation for the commission on May 19,” Ernst said, reading from the state CSC’s agenda last Friday.

The Long Beach CSC progress report, dated April 30, states that the city is developing new procedures and an Applicant Tracking System to eliminate the examination and appointment of applicants who don’t meet the minimum qualifications, as well as to modernize and streamline the process by which the commission monitors applicants and access information.

The report comes after Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice announced in March that her office would investigate whether members of the city’s Civil Service Commission engaged in criminal activity or mismanagement, following a state report that indentified numerous irregularities in the three-person commission’s operations. The most important charges are that it continues non-compliance in two fundamental operations: payroll certification and appointment. 

“With respect to the payroll certification program report,” the progress report states, “the commission in cooperation with the agencies in its jurisdiction, will certify each applicable payroll upon satisfactory compliance that all employments and appointment under the commission’s jurisdiction comport with the provisions of civil service law and rule.”

The state report also cited one instance in which an employee resigned in October 2008 but reappeared on the payroll a year later, though no documents showed that the CSC reviewed the employee’s return to the payroll. 

The city’s progress report states that his employee is “being paid out of accrued vacation/sick/personnel time and, as such, still appears on the payroll.”

The Long Beach CSC oversees more than 1,000 Civil Service employees – 576 in school district, 477 employed by the city and 33 in the Housing Authority, as well as an undetermined number of library workers, according to 2008 work force data.  

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