We'll learn how No. 127 made the jump to head of the class when everyone is under oath

Various city officials have offered explanations as to why three applicants for the job of police officer were hired above others who had better grades on their Civil Service examinations, but none has adequately explained how the applicant who was 127th on the list managed to get hired.
If it had not been for a disgruntled applicant's lawsuit, this absurdity might have gone unnoticed.
Now it appears that the only way the officials who made the decisions -- two of whom, the former police chief and the former mayor, no longer work for the city -- are going to fully explain their actions is when everyone involved is required to testify under oath in the suit.
We can hardly wait.
The suit was brought by James Conroy. And though he scored 6th on the promotional exam, we are not advocating that he be appointed to the force. Conroy has already been a Youngstown police officer. He was fired from his job as a detective sergeant in 2001 for his part in harassing a citizen who testified against him in an internal affairs investigation. He successfully appealed his firing, then resigned from the force. Now he wants back.
The Youngstown Police Department can get along perfectly well without Conroy. But it can get along equally well without Dorothy Johnson, who scored 127th on the test.
Attack on Civil Service
Civil Service law was designed to take politics, cronyism and nepotism out of the process of hiring government employees, and it performed its function admirably, though not perfectly, for decades.
Civil Service tests came under attack in the 1970s on charges that the tests discriminated against minorities. For a time, Youngstown was under a federal court order to maintain two Civil Service lists, one for white males and the other for minority applicants. That was an effort to establish a better minority balance on the department. But that court order was lifted years ago, and subsequent Supreme Court rulings have discouraged the use of racial preferences in hiring, even if the effect of such preferences served a generally desirable end, such as achieving a more integrated department.
Nonetheless, some Youngstown officials argued that the city still had a legal obligation to maintain separate lists, and City Council passed legislation to that effect.
The question of whether the city is allowed to do its hiring from two lists is going to have to be answered before the new mayor, Jay Williams, has to make his first hiring decision, which will be made based on results of more recent testing.
But the question of exactly how Johnson got hired last summer by Mayor George McKelvey, on the recommendation of Police Chief Bob Bush, will have to be answered in court.
The court may order the rehiring of Conroy, though that's far from certain. Conroy can argue that Johnson should not have been hired, but that doesn't mean he should have been. Civil Service law gives the appointing authority the discretion to choose from among the top 10 qualified applicants.
More reason for doubt
Not only did Johnson score 127th on the exam, a voice stress test she took indicated possible deception in answers to questions about theft, drug use and domestic violence.
Bush's response was that there are "few pristine" applicants for Youngstown police jobs. That strikes us as an insult to past appointees and to the 126 applicants who scored above Johnson.
William M. Carter, executive director of Youngstown's human relations committee, defends the city's continued use of two eligibility lists as necessary to eliminating "under-utilization of minorities/females in its work force." A 1998 affirmative action plan said the city would more actively recruit applicants from minority organizations and schools, and use dual lists in the "short term."
Aggressive and imaginative recruiting, helping potential minority applicants win scholarships for criminal justice studies in college, mentoring promising students -- all would be legitimate means of increasing the minority pool of police applicants. Chronically falling back on separate test results for minority applicants becomes demeaning.
When the law is stretched so far that one of three people hired is the 127th on the list -- and that person's prescreening raised questions about her honesty -- the Civil Service process becomes a farce.
But the only way the truth is going to come out now is through the trial process, with all parties required to answer questions under oath about how Johnson jumped from No. 127 to No. 3.
It is incumbent on this city administration to go through that process so that questions about the behavior of members of the previous administration are fully answered. Anything less would look like a cover-up.