A member of the Los Angeles Fire Commission today expressed concern that a recommended anti-nepotism policy would unfairly discourage recruits whose “family business” happens to be firefighting.
Commissioner Steve Fazio said he “couldn’t care less if the whole class was related to the fire department.”
“I think we just want to make sure they’re not getting any advantage,” he said.
Fazio said he wants to ensure that relatives of department employees do not feel discouraged from applying and “that we’re not disadvantaging people because their parents or their uncle or their relative was a member of a great fire department.”
Commission President Delia Ibarra wondered if an anti-nepotism policy would be “meaningful if we can’t establish the closeness of the relationship.”
“For me, I don’t know if I have any relatives in the department,” she said. “I have hundreds of cousins. I really do.”
The remarks came in response to Independent Assessor Sue Stengel’s review of a recent round of recruitment that drew criticism.
Among the issues with the recruitment, which started in January and resulted in the graduation of 58 new firefighters in June, was the possibility that recruits with family members in the fire department may have gotten extra help in the hiring process.
The discovery of possible bias in the hiring process prompted Mayor Eric Garcetti to suspend the recruitment process temporarily, and is the subject of an internal investigation by the Fire Department.
Of the 70 members who took part in a training academy held earlier this year, 21 had “one or more” relatives in the fire department, according to Stengel.
Raters who score examinations throughout the recruitment process are not allowed to be related to job applicants, Stengel said, but the personnel department discovered some who did have relatives, despite the department’s efforts to “identify and disqualify would-be raters who were related to applicants.”
Two other employees were found to have released confidential information about the process, Stengel said.
She recommended the department institute a clearer and broader application of the agency’s existing anti-nepotism policy.
Currently fire personnel assigned to train recruits are required to sign a statement detailing the department’s anti-nepotism policy, according to Stengel’s report. The trainers are also required to look through the class rosters and disclose any familial ties that may exist.
Stengel suggests that the department’s existing “anti-nepotism protocol” should apply to “all employees involved in the selection, hiring and training of new recruits.”
Stengel also recommended that the department review whether the definition for family ties is broad enough to avoid conflicts of interests, and to make sure that the anti-nepotism protocol clearly defines which relationships constitute a conflict of interest.
She said there should be a “catch-all provision” that allows any employee who thinks he or she has a conflict of interest to acknowledge it.
A procedure should also be created to guide the transferring employees who have conflicts of interest, her report said.
Stengel wrote that “allegations of preferential treatment for family members, as well as allegations of bias and impropriety, tainted” the recruitment process.
Her recommendations are meant to “enhance the past efforts of the department and to assist in ensuring the process is fair, objective and impartial,” she said.
Stengel urged the fire department to move ahead with her recommendations as soon as possible so they can be applied to “future examinations for entry-level firefighters.”
