Court Opinion

ID: 9635845
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:07:57.620889+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:37.625917
License: Public Domain

LEVY, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent because of a different understanding of Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. *1891269m, the firemen’s and policemen’s civil service statute. It generally provides for the classification of personnel within the police department (of the City of Houston, the “HPD”) and the promotion of officers to higher classifications solely according to their positions on “eligibility lists,” to be determined by competitive examinations. As with probably all civil service plans, the overriding purposes are to secure to the governmental units capable personnel, insulated from political pressures, with permanent tenure and promotion from within based wholly on merit and fitness, determined objectively by the forementioned competitive examinations.
Contrary to such salutary purposes, nine “civilian” positions were created by Houston city ordinances within the HPD, and each position was filled by the police chief with civilians who were not on any art. 1269m promotional eligibility list and who had not taken any qualifying or competitive examination. Each civilian appointee assumed duties previously performed by police officers who were then reassigned within the department. Later, four new bureaus were created, and the police chief promoted four outside civilian administrators to supervise these bureaus. None of them qualified by the art. 1269m examination procedures.
Appellees filed suit, alleging that the four bureau and nine administrative positions should have been filled by those at the top of the current respective promotional eligibility lists, with promotions for the resultant vacancies at the successively lower classifications also determined by the appropriate eligibility lists. The trial court entered a declaratory judgment declaring the forementioned municipal ordinances void as without authority to place non-classified civilian personnel in classified civil service positions within the HPD, finding that the appellants’ actions and the ordinances violated the hiring and promotional mandates of art. 1269m, and directing that all appellees be promoted, with back pay, to the rank and from the date each should have been promoted, but for the described appointment of non-classified civilian personnel to such vacancies.
To prevent recurrence of what it called “a settled course of conduct,” the trial court also permanently enjoined the appellants, inter alia, from hiring, promoting, or otherwise authorizing non-commissioned civilian personnel to work within classifications that are presently occupied, or have heretofore been occupied, by classified Houston police officers. Moreover, the court found that the appellants’ actions were not motivated by a good faith desire to increase efficiency and economy within the HPD but, on the contrary, constituted intentional circumvention of the hiring and promotional scheme established by the civil service statute.
I agree substantially with the trial court, excepting only its finding as to absence of good faith, and would affirm its judgment.
In justifying its reversal of the trial court’s judgment, based on the premise that civilians may be appointed to posts not within the art. 1269m classification scheme, the majority of this Court asserts that nothing in art. 1269m prohibits the employment of civilians in administrative or policy-making capacities within a police department. I read the legislative intent embodied in § 9(a) differently. It provides that, “no appointments shall ever be made for any position in [the police] department except as a result of [competitive] examination.” (Emphasis added.) It is undisputed that the newly created bureau positions are positions within the HPD, and that none of the appointees was qualified by or selected from promotional eligibility lists. None had even taken examinations to qualify for placement on the eligibility list.
To avoid piecemeal erosion of the civil service objectives, for which erosion I fear the majority is hereby creating an unfortunate precedent, the statute requires that any position within the department be filled as a result of competitive examination. Furthermore, § 8(b) reinforces this unconditional command by providing that “no classification now in existence or that may be hereafter created ... shall ever be filled except by examination held in accordance with the provisions of this law ... All *190vacancies shall be filled by permanent appointment from eligibility lists furnished by the commission within 60 days after such vacancy occurs.”
Such sweeping — and occasionally imprecise 1 — language is deliberately designed, I think, to protect and preserve fully intact the integrity of the civil service ideal — that all hiring and promotion be based on not whom one knows or befriends, but rather on individual merit, to be strictly determined by the wholly objective criteria of competitive examinations. This ideal is, of course, grounded on the assumption— which, for the purposes of this discussion, I accept as valid — that the examinations are rationally designed to determine one’s fitness to perform the job to which the examination pertains. The majority’s somewhat strained interpretations, distinctions, differentiations, and exclusions, although explained by the many semantic and logical ambiguities of this statute, will in the long run, I fear, defeat the legislative intent and cause the disintegration of the objective “merit and fitness” rationale of civil service personnel policies governing hiring and promotion. As I understand the effect of the majority’s dissolution of the trial court’s injunction, it will immediately authorize civilian personnel to occupy supervisory positions over classified HPD officers, with serious erosion of the department’s esprit de corps as an equally immediate, longlasting, and perhaps even more pervasive, result.
The ordinances in question purport to create “new” civilian positions that had actually been civil service positions in existing classifications within the HPD. Normal attrition — death, resignation, termination, etc. — then operated to displace existing classified positions, rather than the police chief promoting classified officers as vacancies occurred. Under the challenged ordinances, the chief appointed civilians to the “new” positions created by the ordinances without administering the competitive examinations mandated by art. 1269m. The challenged positions seem to have resulted from either the separation of a classified police officer, the combining of some, but usually not all, the duties of various classified officers for the purpose of elevating an existing classified position to a “bureau level” status, or restructuring of the police department to create “new” classified positions.
What emerges from the record evinces an operating principle cleverly developed by appellants that all classifications now in existence may be manipulated or replaced by civilian personnel merely by changing the name of the position. Such an innovative principle apparently assumes that the City of Houston, governed by the Home Rule Amendment, may do anything not prohibited by the Texas Constitution or the general law, as stated by the majority. Wright v. City of Fort Worth, 497 S.W.2d 88, 90 (Tex.Civ.App.— Fort Worth 1973, writ ref’d n.r.e.). But the City is not authorized to ignore or contravene a general statute enacted by the Legislature concerning the same subject as the City ordinance. City of Wichita Falls v. Abell, 566 S.W.2d 336, 339 (Tex.Civ.App.— Fort Worth 1978, writ ref’d n.r.e.); Murphy v. Wright, 115 S.W.2d 448, 551 (Tex.Civ.App.— Fort Worth 1938, no writ). As reflected in the statute, the civil service policy of this State is not dependent upon the mercy of municipal action, particularly where the effect of such action is to reduce the number of, or abolish, classified positions. A municipality has the burden of showing that it acted in good faith in abolishing a civil service position. Moncrief v. Tate, 593 S.W.2d 312, 314 (Tex.1980); City of San Antonio v. Wallace, 161 Tex 41, 338 S.W.2d 153, 158 (1960). I think it has the same burden where it re-shuffles the functions, or reduces the number, of such positions.
Appellants did not satisfy the trial court, that they acted in good faith under the relevant authorities cited. We are bound *191by the trial court’s findings as long as there is some evidence of probative force to support them — as I think there is — and provided that they are not against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence —and I believe they are not. Akin v. Dahl, 661 S.W.2d 917 (Tex.1983). Indeed, we are also bound to review the evidence in the light most favorable to the trial court’s findings, considering only the evidence and reasonable inferences therefrom that support the court’s findings, and rejecting all evidence contrary thereto. Mediacomp, Inc. v. Capital Cities Communication, Inc., 698 S.W.2d 207 (Tex.App.— Houston [1st Dist.] 1985, no writ). Generally, the findings of fact by the trial court will not be disturbed unless manifestly wrong. This means above all that we are not entitled to substitute our judgment for that of the trial court even though the evidence may admit a different finding from that made by the trial court. Rinn v. Holmstrom, 243 S.W.2d 862, 863 (Tex.Civ.App.— Austin 1951, no writ). The majority has not satisfied me that the trial court was so plainly mistaken.
It seems clear to me that the trial court’s judgment is based upon fact findings that appellants’ actions constituted appointment of civilian personnel to existing classified positions within the HPD, where they would perform traditional law enforcement functions, and as such violated appellees’ civil service protection rights by denying them promotions that they were entitled to under the mandatory provisions of art. 1269m. By placing civilians in classified positions — even accepting the majority’s thesis that civilian employees are not entitled to civil service protection2 — these civilians supervised, evaluated, and recommended discipline for classified police officers, especially in the police academy and the city jail operations. But non-classified HPD members are prohibited from performing “police work,” which I think necessarily includes supervision of classified police officers, and the planning and directing of police operations, encompassing the city jail, the police academy, the local substations, the huge garage facilities, etc.
Violation of appellees’ civil service rights is seen even more clearly when the art. 1269m promotional scheme is analyzed. All vacancies or newly created classified positions must be filled from the top three names on the current active eligibility lists, promulgated as a result of competitive examination. These lists expire by operation of law one year from their inception. Article 1269m, § 14E(2). Police officers must retake the prescribed examination (and obtain one of the three highest grades on the second exam) in order to be first in line for promotion on the next eligibility list. Article 1269m, § 14E(1) and (f). If the officer is not advanced during the term of an eligibility list once he has attained one of the highest three positions on it, his opportunity for advancement may be lost or delayed indefinitely. In addition, once promoted, an officer need serve only two years at the advanced level before becoming eligible to take an examination for promotion to yet another and higher level.
Thus, the appellees who were denied the positions that were “phased out” and replaced by non-classified positions were denied not only a temporary opportunity for advancement — and their statutory right to that position — but potentially future advancements as well.
Other Texas courts have justifiably held that similar attempts to circumvent art. 1269m directives will be scrutinized closely. City of San Antonio v. Wallace, 338 S.W.2d at 158; City of Wichita Falls v. Harris, 532 S.W.2d 653 (Tex.Civ.App.— Fort Worth 1975, writ ref’d n.r.e.). Upon a close and critical examination, as required by established judicial policy, I conclude that this record demonstrates that the City has not justified its contravention of the State civil service statute on the grounds of either economy or efficiency.
It remains to say briefly that the trial court's award of attorneys’ fees against the appellants was appropriate and amply supported by the appellants’ stipulation as *192to a reasonable hourly rate. I thought it was well established that a trial court could take judicial notice of reasonable fees incurred during a non-jury trial and its preparation, and upon appeal therefrom. King Optical v. Automatic Data — Processing of Dallas, 542 S.W.2d 213 (Tex.Civ.App.— Waco 1976, writ ref'd n.r.e.). It is reasonable to infer that the trial court did not intend to award appellees’ attorneys’ fees on appeal unless the appellees were successful on appeal. Southern Farm Bureau Life Ins. Co. v. Reed, 563 S.W.2d 634 (Tex.Civ.App.— Eastland 1978, writ ref’d n.r.e.). Of course, the majority’s disposition of this appeal' renders this problem moot — at least until the Texas Supreme Court adjudicates the merits.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent and would affirm the trial court’s judgment declaring those portions of the City of Houston’s ordinances 82-1165, 84-1290, 85-568, and 86-1278, void insofar as they: (a) authorized the appointment of non-classified civilian personnel to classified positions within the HPD, where at least some of them would perform traditional law enforcement functions; (b) created new classifications that are required to be staffed only according to procedures established by article 1269m; or (c) abolished several positions within the article 1269m classification scheme, and would also affirm its findings of fact and injunc-tive relief.

. The language of §§ 9e and 12(c) may arguably be interpreted to apply only to law enforcement positions, as the majority so holds. Such a narrow construction, in my view, is inconsistent with the general intent and purpose of article 1269m, vfc, that all employees (including secretaries and building managers) of the HPD be hired or promoted strictly according to the competitive examination results directed by the statute.

. But even technical employees hired to perform technical functions within the HPD are vested by art. 1269m with classified civil service protection, as the appellees argue in their brief.