The whole city is now vulnerable

Last week, the Grand Coulee City Council reversed its earlier decision that had kept the chief of police job under the protection of the city’s civil service commission.

That reversal should be reconsidered.

No matter how much faith council members may have in the current mayor, who pushed for the change, such far-reaching policy changes should not be based on the dominant personalities of the moment.

That can be a difficult point to defend when every-one currently involved seems to have the best interests of the community at heart. But council needs to look with a skeptical eye far past whatever they perceive the current circumstance to be. It’s not that hard to imagine a less-than-benevolent mayor bent on having his way with the police department, bending a chief to his will by threatening his livelihood.

Preventing such a scenario is the whole idea behind having a civil service commission.

The very idea of a civil service commission was born in the wake of the assassination of U.S. President James Garfield. Garfield advocated in the 1880s for implementing civilc service reform to rid the federal government of the inevitable result of the lack of such reform: complete corruption through patronage. He was murdered by a man who wanted a job he thought due him through this so-called “spoils system,” a term referring to the idea that to the political victor goes the spoils of political war.

Civil service commissions are charge with making sure public servant positions are filled — and kept — by competent workers protected from the spoils system.

One could argue that such protection is not needed in a small town for many government jobs. But the person who heads the police department, who, after all, could be faced someday with arresting his boss, surely does need this protection.

By failing to provide it, the current mayor and city council have replaced the solid rock under the foundation of city government with sand. It may be much easier to work with in the short term, but as we all know, foundations built on sand are likely to fail.

Scott Hunter

editor and publisher