Merit System Investigation: Hiring process put in spotlight

[ridgerunner]

Expert surprised by Kentucky practices

Sunday, May 22, 2005
By Elisabeth J. Beardsley
[e-mail]
The Courier-Journal

There's a simple set of rules if you want one of roughly 26,000 jobs in Kentucky's merit system.

Look through the listings, fill out an application, meet the minimum requirements, take a test if needed and then wait until your name is plucked off a list for an interview.

But the attorney general, state Personnel Board and other state officials are investigating whether members of Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration used a different rule for hiring: It's not what you know, but whom you know.

A state worker has alleged that some state transportation workers have been hired for their politics, not qualifications. If true, the politicization would violate state merit system laws, a misdemeanor punishable by 30 days to six months in jail, forfeiture of office, and a ban on holding a state job for five years.

more:http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050522/NEWS0104/505220490/1008/NEWS01

[loudsue]

1. Shoot! All the State Employees of every state would

have a lawsuit. And prolly half the county and city/town employees, to boot! It's all very political!

:kick::kick::kick:

[Senior citizen]

2. Don't forget the feds

The federal merit system is no better. Supervisors shape job requirement to fit their friends before they post jobs to the public, and in case that isn't enough, I know of several proven (meaning zillions more where they didn't get caught) cases of the grading process being unfair.

And one time I just happened to be sitting outside a federal office waiting for some bureaucratic nonsense, when the people inside the office, apparently unaware that the door was ajar and that I was there, were casually discussing getting a federal civil service job for a judge's nephew.

This is such old stuff--it used to be called the Peter Principle, where you gave somebody a position they didn't deserve, because then you owned them, as with the puke-appointed judges. I find it rather funny that countries we once used to view with disdain as being corrupt banana republics, are now looking down on us as being much more corrupt than they ever were. See? We're the best! Maybe we don't have the biggest budget surplus, or the most jobs, or the best educated citizenry, or the best educational system, or the best health care, etc., etc., but we can definitely say that we have more prisoners than any other country in the world and that we have THE most corrupt public officials and judges. Nobody can compete with us--we're number one!