Opinion ID: 2622597
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Does the City's decision to subcontract ARFF services violate Idaho Civil Service Laws and thus Idaho Constitution Article XII, Section 2?

Text: Article XII, section 2 of the Idaho Constitution provides: Any county or incorporated city or town may make and enforce, within its limits, all such local police, sanitary and other regulations as are not in conflict with its charter or with the general laws. The City of Boise, a municipal entity under the Constitution, established a civil service system for employees of the City through enactment of Ordinances 2-03-01 through 2-03-23. The stated purpose behind the creation of the civil service system is to provide a means whereby employees of the cities of the State of Idaho may be selected, retained and promoted on the basis of merit and performance of duties, thus effecting economy and efficiency in the administration of city government. See I.C. § 50-1601. Adoption of a civil service system is voluntary and not required either by statute or by the Idaho Constitution. The Union argues that the civil service statutes not only require civil service employees to provide all city services but also prohibit the subcontracting of work to non-civil service employees. The Union argues that the agreements between the City and IDANG, which effectively replaced civil service employees with non-civil service personnel to provide fire suppression and ARFF services at the Boise airport, are in violation of the statutes and the Constitution. Thus, the question before the Court is one of statutory interpretation, which we freely review. Idaho Fair Share v. Public Utilities Comm'n, 113 Idaho 959, 751 P.2d 107 (1988). The statutory civil service scheme governs employees of cities, and does not address employer-employee relationships between cities and private individuals or entities or other governmental entities. The Boise firefighters as City employees are covered by the civil service system, I.C. § 50-1601 et seq. The IDANG firefighters, who were to provide ARFF services under the 1998 agreements with the City, are federal government employees, not subject to the Idaho civil service system. The civil service statutes regulate how positions of employment are filled and dictate the method of appointment, promotion, removal and discharge. I.C. §§ 50-1604, -1606, -1609. The act requires appointment to positions after competitive exams and protects employees by providing that all applicants thereafter appointed shall hold office, place, position or employment only during good behavior, and any such person may be removed, discharged, suspended without pay, demoted, reduced in rank, deprived of vacation privileges for cause shown. I.C. § 50-1604. Public services are to be performed wherever practicable by public employees. In this case, ARFF work had been performed jointly by the Boise and IDANG firefighters, consistent with I.C. § 50-321, which allows cities to cooperate with the federal government in operating airport facilities, and I.C. § 67-2328, which provides for agreements between the city and the federal government for ARFF services. By virtue of the 1998 agreements with the City, all ARFF services were shifted to IDANG. Nevertheless, none of the Boise firefighter positions was lost because of the agreements; the firefighters were simply reassigned to different stationhouses or given different firefighting responsibilities. Had the agreements resulted in termination or demotion of existing civil service employees, the City's action would have been in conflict with the Civil Service Act and violated the merit system of filling public employment positions. Although the agreements will likely make it unnecessary for the City to hire additional new employees for some time, this does not constitute a violation of the Act. Accordingly, the district court properly concluded that the agreements did not violate either the Civil Service Act or the Idaho Constitution.