By JOSEPH KELLARD
“The only reason I’m retiring from the civil service commission is because I just found out, right before I started working last week with the lifeguards, that according to state law, a civil service commissioner can’t hold another paying position inside the city,” said Hennessy, who was appointed to the city CSC last September.
David Ernst, public information director for the state Civil Service Commission, confirmed that Hennessy called his office to check on state law regarding his lifeguard position. “Apparently there is no problem in the city charter, but the state civil service law very expressly forbids holding a civil service commission post and another job in the same government,” Ernst said.
A district administrator for the Hewlett-Woodmere school district for the past two years, Hennessy said that since he will be returning to his less lucrative position as a teacher at Hewlett High School, he rejoined the lifeguards in order to compensate for the lost salary. “I needed the money and I loved doing it,” said Hennessy of the lifeguard position that pays him $11,000.
Meanwhile, city Comptroller Sandra Clarson said that in January, the payroll department discovered that all three city civil service commissioners — Hennessy, Leary Wade and Susan Mackston-Solomon -— had been overpaid more than $1,000. Clarson said the city would deduct the pay from the commissioners’ future checks. Hennessy and Clarson blamed the overpayment on Ronnie Miles, a former CSC secretary who filed a case against the city after he was terminated in February, claiming that City Manager Charles Theofan illegally transferred him to another position.
“Tell me how I have any authority to change salaries and things without a personnel action, especially when I was transferred out of the department during the payroll in question,” Miles wrote to the Herald in an e-mail.
Clarson said that there was no personnel action to increase anyone’s salary, and both Hennessy and City Manager Charles Theofan deny that they ordered any pay raise for the commissioners. All three said Miles probably made an innocent clerical error by submitting time cards that paid the commissioners $110 for each meeting, thereby doubling their pay rate.
“Miles probably unintentionally assumed it was $110 per meeting and never asked anyone,” Hennessy said.
Theofan said the CSC increased the frequency of its meetings from one a month to two or three a week as the commissioners worked to comply with the recommendations of the state CSC, which is continuing its investigation into the administration of the city’s merit system.
In 2004, the state CSC released an audit report that gave the city a “poor” rating for improperly classifying employment positions and titles. The report offered 16 recommendations on how Long Beach could improve its system. Hennessy said that since last September, he and the commission have worked diligently to make wide-ranging reforms to put the city agency in compliance with state regulations for the first time since the 1970s, and that they have complied with all but two of the recommendations. According to Ernst, the city has yet to implement three key recommendations: properly certifying the city payroll, getting roster information into good shape and ordering all provisional employees to take exams.
“Why the state civil service commission all of a sudden right now has decided to come down on us when we’ve done more in the past nine months then civil service commissions have done in the past 30 years, I don’t understand,” Hennessy said. “But we’re working with them to try to address those problems.”
Hennessy said that in February the state sent the city a letter asking that the commission provide a timeline and comprehensive plan for how it will fix the city’s civil service system. Last week, Hennessy said, he submitted to the state a detailed, 18-month timeline. “The good news is, before I left, I made sure I had in place a detailed, comprehensive plan with deadlines and benchmarks to keep the progress going,” Hennessy said. “I can guarantee you this whole thing will be cleaned up in a year — not 18 months. We set a deadline for us for 12 months.”
Ernst said that the state commission is scheduled to meet with the city to review and discuss its plan next week.
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
