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Ordinance abolishing civil service panel legal, Pine Bluff argues Friday, May 23, 2008 By Rob Moritz Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - A lawyer for the city of Pine Bluff asked the state Supreme Court on Thursday to reverse a circuit court decision that struck down an ordinance abolishing the city's civil service commission. A Jefferson County circuit judge voided the ordinance in 2007, saying it required a two-thirds vote rather than the simple majority by which it passed. Judge Rob Wyatt Jr. also said in the ruling that the city ordinance abolishing the commission failed to show a cause for removal of the panelists, as required by law. "The general rule for municipalities is what they do with a majority vote they can undo with a majority vote," Mark Hayes, an attorney for the Arkansas Municipal League who argued on behalf of the city of Pine Bluff, argued before the high court Thursday. The high court did not rule on the city's appeal Thursday. Bill James, attorney for the Southern Police Benevolent Association, argued the city did violate state law by abolishing the commission, and that the action was in essence firing of board members, which takes a two-thirds majority. The Pine Bluff City Council adopted the ordinance abolishing the Civil Service Commission by a 5-3 vote along racial lines, with all five black aldermen voting yes and the three white aldermen voting no. In his argument Thursday, Hayes noted a previous case in which the Supreme Court ruled the city council of Ward City in Lonoke County needed a simple majority vote to abolish that community's water board, but a two-thirds majority to fire individual board members. "A legislative body wouldn't be effective if it couldn't undo its decision-making," Hayes told the court. "That's what happened here." Justice Robert Brown asked Hayes if the Pine Bluff City Council was firing board members, or abolishing the board. "They abolished the commission," Hayes said. "It is correct in a factual sense that the people are not in the office any more, but that's not what happened. They abolished the commission." James argued the Legislature created the civil service commission slightly different from other boards and commissions across the state, and that the Ward case was different from the Pine Bluff case. "The water boards were never created to protect the water board or employees," but civil service commissions were created for "political insulation," he said. The Legislature authorized cities to create civil service commissions for the purpose of protecting police and firemen from "political winds, so an officer is not afraid to give a ticket to someone's niece or nephew or brother or sister," James said. |
