Commissioner Murman quoted in this Times article on Civil Service Board bill in the Senate:
Joyner kills Hillsborough civil service bill with little-known rule
Monday, April 28, 2014 10:40pm
A bill that would allow Hillsborough County agencies to opt out of using the county’s Civil Service Board for certain services certainly seemed to have momentum.
HB 683 passed the House on Friday by an impressive 105-3 margin, getting support not just from Republicans, but Democrats, too.
But on Monday, Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, used a little-known rule in the Florida Senate to essentially kill it. After notifying the senate’s rules chairman that she objected to the bill, it was taken off the agenda, where it will remain unless Joyner changes her mind.
Custom allows senators to pluck local bills from the agenda that they don’t like.
For the sponsor of the bill, Rep. Dana Young, R-Tampa, it’s an undemocratic ploy that wipes out a bill that had broad support from Republican Sheriff David Gee to Democratic Clerk of Circuit Court Pat Frank.
“One member of our delegation decided she didn’t like it and, because of this custom, can kill it,” Young said Monday. “It kills the bill. It’s a rule we probably should take a look at. In today’s society, it just isn’t acceptable that one person can do this.”
Joyner said she’s just exercising a right that senators have always had.
“Any senator can pull a local bill off the agenda,” Joyner said, referring to Senate Rule 4.18, which allows “any senator of the delegation for the local area affected by a bill on the Local Bill Calendar” the authority to remove it from the calendar, preventing it from being heard.
The bill would give the county’s 21 agencies, including the sheriff’s office, supervisor of elections, and clerk of courts, greater flexibility in hiring employees.
Right now, the agencies must use the Civil Service Board to perform human resources functions, like the posting of jobs and mediating grievances of the 9,300 employees covered by the board.
It was created in 1951 and was intended to provide a uniform standard based on merit that was free of descrimination in creating and abolishing jobs, filling vacancies, disciplining employees and recommending and adopting pay plans. Without fair standards for government employment, the reasoning goes, jobs get handed to the well-connected rather than the capable.
But for some of the constitutional officers, like Gee and Frank, the seven member board and 29 employees that staff the agency don’t meet the needs of their agency anymore, bogging them down with long wait periods while costing them money. The county must pay the board 0.65 percent of total classified employees, which cost about $3.2 million last year.
Young said agencies like the sheriff’s office, which does its own recruitment for new hires, pays the board almost $1 million.
Her bill was supported by Tampa Democratic representatives Janet Cruz and Mark Danish, too.
In the Senate, it had support as well.
Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, said the entire Hillsborough delegation supported it – except Joyner. He said her manuever was not appropriate.
“It gives too much veto power to one person,” Brandes said. “The rule is troubling.”
But Joyner makes no apologies.
“The Civil Service Board was put in place to prevent political patronage and to make it possible for everybody to have an equal opportunity,” Joyner said.
She said she realizes that the board isn’t perfect. But she said it would be rash to let agencies opt out of its services, which would in effect “throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
“It needs improvements, but the parties need to come together to fix it,” Joyner said, referring to the heads of the agencies and the civil service board.
It’s not clear if Joyner used a rule or a custom afforded senators in yanking off local bills.
“It’s easy for people to criticize the outcome because they don’t like it,” Joyner said. “But it’s been a rule for many years. It wasn’t created for me.”
By Monday night, local officials who had supported the bill were protesting Joyner’s action.
“Every County Commissioner in Hillsborough County and the constitutional officers voted in favor to support reforming (the Civil Service Board),” Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandra Murman wrote in an email to The Buzz. “And we understand that a single senator has objected to this local bill which in essence could doom its passage this year.”
Murman, a former Republican state represenative, said she hoped the Senate would somehow vote on the bill.
But Joyner said wasn’t going to remove her objections. So that means it’s not coming back this session?
“No it’s not,” Joyner said.
