East Hampton Village Gives Priority to Local Residents for Civil Service Jobs

East Hampton Village will be able to mine Civil Service lists for local residents and give them priority for filling open positions under a new law adopted last week.

The Village Board unanimously approved the measure, which gives top priority to residents of the village, and then to anyone who lives in East Hampton Town, regardless of how they may have scored on Civil Service exams.

Civil Service rules generally require that a position be offered to one of the top-scoring individuals on the list of eligible employees. But often that means local governments are obliged to offer the post to candidates — sometimes dozens — who may decline or quit after a short time because they live a long distance away, while a local candidate who did not score as well may be lingering eagerly.

“Some people don’t necessarily score well on tests, or they get a 90 instead of a 95 or 98, and, as an employer, we’re forced to choose one of those people with the higher scores even if we know the person who got the 90,” Village Administrator Marcos Baladron said this week. “It’s better for us to reserve the right to hire people who live in the village or East Hampton Town first, so I can pick that person that scored 90.”

The new preference will apply to any Civil Service positions, including public safety dispatchers — a role Baladron said is particularly important to be able to fill with someone local who knows the sometimes complicated geography of the area and can relay information clearly to emergency responders.

During the statewide Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative in 2021, local departments said that the lack of diversity on local police forces was in large part due to Civil Service rules that had blocked the departments from hiring local men and women who had worked with the department in provisional or part-time roles but could not be “reached” on the Civil Service scoring list when a high-paying police officer job became available.

Baladron said similar scenarios play out in many roles of municipal staffing.

“We hired Drew Smith as beach manager — we know Drew is great because he’s done the job for us for two years already on a provisional basis, and we wouldn’t want to have to bring in someone new that we don’t know if they got a higher score on a test,” Baladron said.

“Even the position of village historian is actually a Civil Service position. Can you imagine if we had to go to someone else other than Hugh King just because maybe they got a higher score than him on a test that day?”