Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

The campaign to discredit the civil service merit system has been gaining momentum. The Civil Service Commission and the Board of Examiners are accused of discrimination against the ethnic minorities. Recently, Police Commissioner Murphy criticized the examination system as an obstacle to the recruitment of black and Puerto Rican policemen. At a recent public hearing of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, Chancellor Harvey Scribner and members of the Board of Education made similar charges. Community school ‘boards, rejecting the regular licensing system, have asserted their right to appoint supervisors on their own, bypassing the regular licensing procedures.

What is at stake in this conflict is the survival of the concept of civil service— and every citizen in New York should be deeply concerned.

Everyone would agree, I think, that the abandonment of the merit system in the recruitment, of personnel for city jobs would be a regressive move. It would lead us back to the chaos of the spoils system under which political influence, nepotism, and overt corruption played a destructive role in appointments. At the same time the existence of religious or ethnic discrimination in government service as well as private industry is abhorrent to every thinking citizen. If the civil service system does It fact result in the exclusion of minority groups, it should, of course, be drastically reformed. But does it?

A news item appeared in The Times of Feb. 27 that unexpectedly throws light on this issue. On Feb. 25, the City Council extended the life of six lists of qualified patrolmen that had legally expired. Since no appOintments had been made to the police force since 1970, these lists, containing several hundred names, had seniority over recent lists. As a result, the most recent list, which included “a large number of members of the ethnic minority groups,” will not be available for appointment to the police force: The significant point is that the civil service examination system did not, in this instance, discriminate against blacks and Puerto Ricans.

The Board of Examiners likewise is charged with discriminatory practices. In July, 4971, Federal Judge Walter Mansfield‐issued an injunction direct ing the board to auspend all supervisory examinations and to issue no further licenses. As a result, an elementary principals’ examination then in progress ground to a halt. The ironic fact is that in this principals’ examination there were approximately 250 minority group applicants who would have been licensed if the licensing process had not been enjoined. Thus, the efforts of those who assail the objective testing procedures Of the Board of Examiners have defeated the realization of their own goals—and incidentally exposed the fallacy of their charges.

ALFRED T. VOGEL New York, Feb. 25, 1972