Hiring freeze thaws s-l-o-w-l-y at city hall: departments scramble to fill many vacancies.

Nearly five months after the city of L.A.'s hiring freeze was lifted, many departments are still scrambling to fill vacant positions deemed essential for operations, especially in enforcing laws and collecting fees.

The effort has been plagued by out-of-date hiring lists, delays in administering civil service exams and musical chair scenarios among department staff. All this comes as personnel officials confront what they're calling a "tidal wave" of applications for the roughly 2,500 advertised openings that followed the lifting of the four-year-old freeze.

As a result, positions that under normal circumstances would take weeks to fill are now taking six months or more. That leaves many departments struggling to cope with reduced staff levels, despite demands from constituents and other city officials to step up their activities.

The Department of Public Works, for example, doesn't have enough staff to enforce Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's ban on rush hour construction. The city's Ethics Department doesn't have enough staff to enforce campaign finance laws.

The Department of Transportation doesn't have enough people to fix broken parking meters. The Planning Department doesn't have enough case handlers to review permit applications, even when private developers foot the staffing bill.

"This is a consequence of having a hiring freeze," said City Councilman Dennis Zine, who chairs the council's Personnel Committee. "When a freeze is thawed, you have an avalanche and flood of applications. But we can't shortcut the process of hiring. There are civil service procedures that must be adhered to. It just takes time."

Personnel woes

Officials with the affected departments say they would like the positions filled by early next year. In the meantime, "there has been considerable frustration," said Gloria Sosa, assistant general manager for the city's Personnel Department.

Ironically, the Personnel Department itself may not have enough staff to expedite the process.

"We, too, we're impacted by the hiring freeze," Sosa said. "It has been difficult to re-staff our divisions to do the (civil service) exams." The department administers more than 400 civil service exams for an estimated 900 job classifications covering the city's 44,000-person workforce.

Sosa said the department hired five people as the hiring freeze was ending last June, leaving it with only one vacancy that it is now trying to fill. But she said that if the department cannot reduce the backlog of exams and applications in the next couple of months, "we may have to re-examine our own staffing levels."

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks sent the local economy into a tailspin, then-Mayor James Hahn clamped down on spending by instituting the freeze. Some public safety related jobs were exempt, while hundreds of other jobs were exempted with City Council approval.

The hiring freeze, which covered most vacancies that opened up through attrition, wasn't rescinded until this fiscal year as financial pressures on the city budget began to ease, thanks in part to a surge in revenues from transactions related to real estate and its rising prices.

The duration of the freeze meant that hiring lists were outdated. To get on a hiring list for a job with civil service protection, a current or prospective employee must take an exam for the appropriate job classification. In most cases, the exams are only valid for two years, after which time the person seeking to remain on a hiring list must retake the exam.

"We were deluged with applicants for exams," Sosa said.

Adding more pressure was a wave of pent-up promotions. After not being able to advance their careers for nearly four years, thousands of city employees rushed to apply for openings in higher job classifications with higher pay. "We have to backfill those promotions," Zine said, referring to vacant spots that had been held by the now-promoted workers.

In effect, the process has turned into what one City Hall staff member termed a "giant game of musical chairs."

What's more, a strong local economy has lured some city employees to the private sector, creating even more openings. "City employees do have several options now, with the lifting of the hiring freeze and a strong economy," said Chief Administrative Officer Bill Fujioka.

But Sosa said that, with the exception of police officers, there has not been a wholesale exodus to the private sector. "People tend to stay because of the benefit packages," she said.

Meanwhile, city departments have faced conflicting demands. While the hiring freeze has been lifted, the city still faces a budget deficit projected to top $200 million next year. Villaraigosa has ordered city departments to rein in spending, even warning of possible midyear budget cuts.

That has led some departments to "reprioritize" their hiring plans in recent weeks. As a result, the number of openings in specific job classifications has been in flux, which means changing or rescheduling civil service exams.

"We're trying to develop a master calendar of hiring priorities citywide so we can expedite the process," Sosa said.