ST. LOUIS — Amid the politically sensitive search for a new police chief, the administration of Mayor Tishaura O. Jones is also pushing for more control over another powerful city agency.
The city’s personnel department, which plays a central role in all civil service hiring at City Hall, is undergoing its own leadership change — and that’s led recently to some dramatic behind-the-scenes moves, including the lockout of some employees while documents were secured, City Hall sources confirmed Monday.
Governed by the three-member Civil Service Commission, the personnel department is a legacy of 1940s-era reforms designed to curb patronage in city government. The personnel director can’t be fired by the mayor except after formal charges of malfeasance, giving the department, whose staff don’t even work inside City Hall, an uncommon degree of insulation from elected leaders.
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But recently, aldermen have criticized the personnel department for outdated hiring procedures that haven’t kept up with labor shortages and city job vacancies. Other city officials have complained — quietly, for fear of provoking a department that controls the process for staffing their departments — about the power wielded by obscure and largely unaccountable bureaucrats over a city workforce of some 5,000 people.
The director and staff hold considerable clout over city hiring practices, testing job applicants and compiling lists of eligible job candidates.
That extends to one of the most high-profile jobs outside of the mayor. Former Personnel Director Richard Frank in September said his department would control choosing finalists for police chief, a departure from the 2017 search for Chief John Hayden, when the city used a consultant.
But Frank, who had overseen personnel since 2004, suddenly in November announced he would retire Dec. 1, giving Jones, who took office in April, a rare opportunity to shape the department’s leadership.
Frank and other personnel department leaders have not returned multiple calls for comment.
A permanent personnel director is hired by the mayor from a slate of three candidates chosen by the Civil Service Commission. In the meantime, the commission picks an interim director to lead the department.
But a rule governing how an interim director is chosen was changed over the summer to make sure the person comes from within the personnel department.
At a Civil Service Commission meeting on Monday, chair Bettye Battle-Turner asked to revisit that rule. She said she didn’t realize the rule requiring an interim director to come from within the personnel department was added in June.
“What I did find out was that a lot of the changes in the rule took place in June 2021 as opposed to having already been there,” Battle-Turner said.
The commission on Dec. 3 named Sylvia Donaldson, a 40-year employee of the department, as interim director. Her hiring was not announced but confirmed by a city spokesman when asked a few days later.
Multiple sources from within City Hall have told the newspaper that several employees of the personnel department who were close to Frank were briefly locked out of their offices the following Monday, Dec. 6, amid the leadership transition.
A person familiar with the matter said a whistleblower complaint was filed over practices in the personnel department, and others have said the lockout was to secure documents as part of an investigation. The whistleblower complaint came after Frank retired, a person familiar with the matter said.
The investigation has been referred to authorities, according to one person who spoke on the condition of anonymity, though the person declined to say what entity or office was investigating the complaint.
Amid the behind-the scenes upheaval, the Civil Service Commission is now revisiting the rule governing who can serve as interim director of the personnel department.
Battle-Turner said the commission would redraft the rule on the interim director job and send it to the city counselor’s office for review. The commission would still need to take a final vote on the rule.
“What we really want to do is give the mayor an opportunity to make a suggestion to the board and the board will work and act upon that suggestion,” she said. “Or if the board has someone else in mind that is from the personnel department, they can choose that person.”
The other two commissioners agreed, arguing they mostly interact with the personnel director, giving them little insight into other qualified department staff.
“We had to do a lot of digging even to appoint an acting interim director,” said Dean Kpere-Daibo, Jones’ only appointee to the commission who joined just as Frank left. “I’m in support of a rule change.”
Getting information about the rules governing personnel department leadership, and when they changed, has been difficult. The Post-Dispatch last week requested past meeting minutes and agenda packets from the Civil Service Commission, but the custodian of records for the Civil Service Commission says it will take until at least Jan. 31 to provide the public documents.
It’s unclear whether the rule change would apply to Donaldson, the current interim director.
But another person who has held sway in the department for decades behind the director is on her way out.
Linda Thomas, whose tenure at City Hall stretches back to the 1960s and some say largely ran the department, is retiring in January, a person familiar with the matter says. Thomas already retired once but was allowed to return as a part-time “at will employee” for years under Frank — drawing a pension and a $60 an hour paycheck as deputy director.
Thomas did not respond to a request for comment.