The ‘Strongest Civil Service System in the Country’ Is Poised for a Major Overhaul
The Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison. Lindsay Douglas / Shutterstock.com
But the reforms for state government hiring in Wisconsin, including scrapping the civil service exam, aren’t a done deal yet.
State legislative action to totally revamp Wisconsin’s 110-year-old civil service system took another step forward on Tuesday with the Republican-controlled Assembly passing a reform bill on a party-line vote.
But a legislative sticking point with members of the GOP-controlled state Senate over whether to require state government job applicants disclose criminal convictions at the beginning of the process means that final action on civil service reform likely won’t be resolved until next year.
The proposed changes would drastically change the way Wisconsin hires state employees. As The Capital Times in Madison reports, the biggest reforms include:
- Replacing the civil service exam with a resume-based hiring system.
- Instituting a 60-day hiring timeframe goal.
- Introducing a merit-based pay raises.
- Clarifying the definition of "just cause" for firing.
- Extending the probationary period for new state employees from six months to two years.
- Making layoff determinations based on job performance and not seniority.
Wisconsin’s civil service system, which was instituted to curb political patronage in state hiring, was introduced in 1905 under the administration of then-Gov. Robert La Follette, a Republican and later a Progressive Party member well known for his anti-corruption advocacy in Wisconsin and on Capitol Hill when he served in the U.S. Senate.
When Wisconsin’s current Republican governor, Scott Walker, was pushing the controversial Act 10 to restrict the collective bargaining rights of state workers in 2011, he hailed the strength of the state’s civil service protections, saying they wouldn’t be impacted.
The Capital Times points out Walker’s comments from four years ago:
"In Wisconsin, the rights that most workers have have been set through the civil service system, which predates collective bargaining by several generations," Walker said in March 2011. "That doesn't change. All the civil service protections — the strongest civil service system in the country — still strongly remains intact."
But times have apparently changed. Walker is backing the civil service reforms but argues there are still strong worker protections.
"The people of this state can have absolute full confidence that when these reforms are passed, people will still be hired based on merit," Walker said in September, according to WITI-TV / Fox6 News.
Legislative Republicans say their reform efforts are aimed at aligning state hiring practices with the private sector. Wisconsin Democrats and their allies in organized labor are predicting that the legislation will usher in political cronyism in hiring and political motivations in firing.
As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:
Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Greenville) said it only made sense to update a system that saw its last major overhaul in the 1990s.
"How many of you use the same hiring practices as you did even 20 years ago?" Murphy asked, addressing business owners among the lawmakers.
But Democrats said the measure could undermine the civil service's founding slogan of "the best shall serve the state."
"Instead of the best serving the state, you want your best friend serving the state," Rep. Andy Jorgensen (D-Milton) said.
Supporters of civil service reforms say that critics of the proposal are wrong when they say the legislation is a way to introduce political favoritism to state hiring.
“Just because you say it over, and over, and over again, doesn’t make it true,” said Rep. Jim Steineke, a Republican from Kaukauna who sponsored the bill, according to the Wisconsin Radio Network.
Wisconsin’s civil service system includes about 30,000 state employees.
Michael Grass is Executive Editor of Government Executive’s Route Fifty.
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