The wrong kind of outlier
New York City needs civil service reform
New Yorkers will soon vote on whether to amend the city’s charter—its 340 page-constitution. Mayor Mamdani set up a commission to write the ballot initiative. That commission has a great chance reform a system that makes New Yorkers wait for more than a year to get hired in a city job. It’s crazy—and it’s fixable, as I explained in testimony last week. This is lightly edited.
Excellent public services demand an excellent system for recruiting and retaining great staff. New York’s is broken. There are about twice as many vacancies as before the pandemic, in jobs the city desperately needs. To issue permits for housing. To award contracts for roads. To collect taxes and deliver benefits.
Much of the challenge is at the state level. But much is in the city’s hands.
Twenty-six hundred job titles, many with obscure names like “administrative staff analyst.” An obstacle course for applicants, starting with exams that take months to grade and may not be given for years. Fourteen months or more from exam to hire, per a recent Council hearing.
On the manager’s side, a forced choice among just three top exam scorers. If they say no, rigid requirements to go down a list that may be years old.
The objectives here are good. Nobody wants a return to Tammany Hall.
But—and I say this coming from Recoding America, an organization that works on these issues nationally—other states and cities determine merit, prevent corruption, and respect organized labor without such a labyrinth.1
Boston, Denver, and Seattle–Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Colorado–either skip exams or limit them to a few departments like police and fire.
A “rule of three” operates in only four states.
And most states have half or a third as many job classifications as New York.
There’s no reason to believe these placs are more corrupt, nor their employees less qualified.
Complexity favors powerful or popular interests that get access to workarounds–hiring exceptions, special authorities. Those with less influence lose out. And when the city can’t hire the people it needs, it relies on contractors who cost more.
The city can choose a better way, one that makes the civil service an even better mechanism for upward mobility on fair terms. Create broader job titles that match the labor market and create career paths. Let managers hire based on skills and experience, not just test scores. Fight corruption and ensure equity with targeted oversight, not straightjackets.
Here are two ideas that fit specifically in your charge:
First, even in a world of state authority, consider changing the charter to take advantage of state-offered flexibilities like the NY HELPS program that temporarily suspended exams for many hard-to-fill titles. It resulted in over 40,000 new state hires. Unlike 45 counties, New York City opted out. A new mayor and charter amendment can opt in.
Second: establish a commission to overhaul the city’s civil service system, like the SPEED commission on housing. Not nibbling around the edges, like more authorities and better websites. But real change, soup to nuts.
Millions of New Yorkers are all-in on this Administration’s ambitious vision. Fix hiring so that the city can deliver.