A little more than a year after a federal order governing Macon’s public safety job promotions was lifted, city police and firefighters in certain ranks still are waiting for promotions.
“The goal is by the end of the year,” said Andrew Blascovich, a spokesman for Macon Mayor Robert Reichert.
A federal judge lifted the 28-year-old consent decree Aug. 14, 2009, which had required federal monitoring to correct and end racial discrimination in hiring and promotion practices.
Registries of police officers and firefighters eligible for promotion in the positions of police lieutenant, police sergeant and fire sergeant expired about a month after the consent order was lifted. Without active registries, the vacancies can’t be filled.
To form registries, police officers and firefighters are tested on skills related to their jobs and ranked according to their scores.
The Macon Police Department has four lieutenant and nine sergeant vacancies, Chief Mike Burns said.
There are vacancies for nine fire sergeants, said Cliff Rushin, Macon-Bibb County assistant fire chief.
Burns said the vacancies mean that there are fewer supervisors for younger officers.
“We’re spread thin with supervisors right now,” he said.
With a new pay scale coming in 2011, having promotions before the pay scale’s implementation in January “would do a lot for morale,” Burns said.
Besides the immediate benefit of a higher salary upon promotion, officers’ salaries also are used to determine retirement payouts, he said.
“There’s a lot of officers that want their shot” at promotion, Burns said.
Fire Chief Marvin Riggins said his department hasn’t had any problems related to the delay in promotions.
The department has temporarily filled vacancies with “tenured” firefighters, he said.
“It’s training on the job,” he said. “It’s not promoting them.”
Riggins said filling vacancies temporarily helps morale in his department because the firefighters are paid for the extra responsibility.
Burns has said the police department filled positions temporarily on a previous occasion when the department had vacancies, but many of the officers put in higher-ranking positions weren’t eventually promoted based on test scores.
Without the benefit of a full promotion, the temporary fill-ins also were hesitant to make tough decisions that might affect their chances of getting promoted.
In the immediate wake of the consent order’s lifting, city Human Resources Director Ben Hubbard, said tests used for promotion were being developed and were expected to be completed by the end of 2009. In February 2010, city officials estimated that promotions would be made by Oct. 1.
Blascovich said delays were caused by the city’s having to manage the effects of employee layoffs, writing a new budget, handling changes to the city’s health care plan and work on the new pay scale.
The city has chosen the Carl Vinson Institute of Government, based at the University of Georgia, to write the promotion tests, Blascovich said. The city’s goal is to have testing complete by Nov. 1.
“Everything looks to be moving toward that,” he said.
Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report. To contact writer Amy Leigh Womack, call 744-4398.
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