New city hiring practices replace merit with patronage

If you’ve been around Philadelphia’s political scene long enough, you’ve probably heard Lincoln Steffens’ line about the city. “All our municipal governments are more or less bad,” Steffens wrote in 1903, but “Philadelphia is simply the most corrupt and the most contented.” It’s an old line that remains remarkably relevant.

Steffens wrote this at a time when political reform and anticorruption movements were becoming more popular. But Philadelphia was a growing city full of jobs and money, and the political machine — led by Republicans in those days — was determined to steal as much of it as it could.

As historian Lloyd M. Abernethy wrote in his chapter of Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, this led to “the manipulation of public jobs and contracts for self-serving purposes to a level envied by other urban machines. The 10,000 offices at the disposal of the organization were distributed only to the loyal supporters,” who then donated their time and money to the machine and kept the whole scheme rolling from election to election.

All of this corruption made city government less about serving the people and more about serving the machine. It was (eventually) a major factor in the citywide Democratic victories in 1951 that accompanied a new, reform-minded City Charter and swept the GOP out of power for the first time in 70 years.

» READ MORE: Democrats and Republicans agree on something: no outside competition | Kyle Sammin

One of the reforms ushered in by that movement was merit selection for city jobs. The 1951 charter contained a “rule of two” in hiring: people take a civil service exam and the powers that be can select from among the top two qualifiers on the list.

Reformers believed that getting a job should depend on a neutral principle (whether you were objectively the most qualified applicant), rather than the old way (whether you were a loyal party member). It was a golden age of reform for the city, but as the Democrats consolidated power, they took on many of the characteristics of the Republicans they replaced. By 1954, City Council Democrats were already trying to take the civil service reform sections out of the charter.

In 2021, they finally succeeded. Civil service reform had been under attack for decades in Philadelphia, but that year, the machine finally found the weapon that would deal the death blow to merit selection: calling it racist.

“It is one thing for an employer to say, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ and an entirely different thing for an employer to make real, substantive changes that ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion,” then-Councilmember Cherelle L. Parker said. “Our municipal government is one of the largest employers in the city of Philadelphia, and for too long, the rule of two has held back Black and brown employees, either from obtaining that entry-level job or from getting that promotion.”

Parker sponsored the bill to amend the City Charter for this purpose, and it passed easily in Council and in the referendum during the election that year. Now as mayor, Parker and her staff have the power to hire basically whomever they want for any job.

How? It’s easy. The 2021 amendment changed that “two” in the rule of two to any number of people “as determined by the personnel director based on the position and the needs of the civil service program.” That means they can choose from the top 10 applicants, top 100, top million — whatever they think is best. It is a standard that is no standard at all.

» READ MORE: The Philly GOP is dead. Long live the Philly GOP. | Kyle Sammin

Choosing from only two candidates, some politicians said, was too constricting and outdated. And maybe that’s true. But the solution returns the city to an even more outdated system, one that reformers thought they vanquished seven decades ago. Sure, it’s dressed up in new clothes — diversity, equity, and inclusion — but it amounts to the same old thing: letting politicians hire based on their political needs, not the needs of Philadelphians.

And will the new rule make for a more diverse workforce? Not really. As noted in The Inquirer last month, “the city’s workforce of almost 24,000 was about 48% Black, 38% white, 7% Hispanic or Latino, and 4% Asian, according to a city dashboard. Philly’s population as a whole, meanwhile, is about 40% Black, 37% white, 16% Hispanic or Latino, and 8% Asian, according to the census.” That is to say: The city’s workforce — almost all of them hired under the rule of two — already roughly reflects the racial makeup of the population.

Black Philadelphians had very few city jobs in 1951, and liberal reformers promised that a fair hiring system would eliminate that racial disparity. And it did. The return to the old ways from a party that usually trumpets itself as progressive should come as a shock, but it doesn’t. Machines are machines, no matter who runs them.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to broaden employment opportunities, but there are better ways to go about it. One alternative — also Parker’s initiative — should be less divisive: the elimination of college degree requirements for jobs that really don’t need them. This executive order follows a similar effort in state government by Gov. Josh Shapiro and does not contain the same risk of political corruption. It’s a rare spot of common ground between the major parties and will not reduce the quality of city services.

Philadelphia needs more ideas like that one and fewer that hark back to the bad old days when Steffens called us “the worst governed city in the country.”