Aldermen demand more frequent firefighter entrance exams to diversify CFD

The Chicago Police Department has been holding frequent entrance exams — in May and June of this year with a third coming up in December — as it wraps up a two-year hiring surge to add 970 additional officers over and above attrition.

But the Chicago Fire Department is a different story. There was a firefighters entrance exam in 2014. There won’t be another one until 2021.

On Tuesday, African-American aldermen who have clamored for diversity in a fire department with a long and documented history of discrimination demanded more frequent testing.

“Don’t you think that’s an investment that is worthwhile? We can’t keep doing the same dance expecting different results. We’re not gonna be able to diversify the fire department until we recruit diversity to the fire department,” Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th) told Human Resources Commissioner Soo Choi.

“You think 2021 is an adequate amount of time to ensure that there’s diversity on the fire department? We have the history . . . of discrimination [in a department that] dragged its feet for so long, by the time the list of eligible fire people were up, they were too old to actually join the force.”

On the hot seat at City Council budget hearings, Choi said each firefighters entrance exam costs Chicago taxpayers $3 million.

With 18,207 firefighter candidates processed from the 2014 exam and 15,000 candidates still remaining on that list, it’s just not worth the money, she said.

“Unlike police officer eligibility lists, the Fire Department does not move through its eligibility lists not even close to as [quickly]. It becomes a cost-benefit analysis,” Choi said.

“I’m aware — more than aware — that there is a desire to test more frequently. I’m committed to looking at all possible options.”

Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) pressed the point even further.

If money can be set aside away each year to replenish Chicago’s rainy day fund, surely money can be squirreled away to hold more frequent firefighters entrance exams, she said.

“It’s important to do because, as we heard from the fire commissioner, he has to go through 100 people on the list in order to just find one,” Dowell said.

Choi repled, “I do believe that we should be testing more frequently. It really will boil down to whether we can find cost-effective ways to do that.”

Before asking for a $3 million appropriation, Choi said she first wants to “find ways to bring that pricetag down.”

The sensitivity from aldermen is well-founded.

In 1973, a federal class-action lawsuit accused the Chicago Fire Department of discriminatory hiring and promotional practices. At the time, only 4 percent of Chicago’s 5,000 firefighters were black.

The lawsuit resulted in a four-year freeze on hiring and promotions and a federal consent decree mandating minority hiring. Between 1977 and 1979, the number of black firefighters increased from 150 to roughly 400.

Under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Chicago resolved a bitter legal battle the mayor inherited from former Mayor Richard M. Daley, stemming from the city’s discriminatory handling of a 1995 firefighters entrance exam.

The city agreed to hire 111 bypassed African-American firefighters and borrow the $78.4 million needed to compensate nearly 6,000 African-Americans who never got that chance.

On the issues of overall city employee hiring, Hispanic aldermen, demanding parity in city jobs and contracts, accused Choi last year of shortchanging Chicago’s fastest-growing group.

On Tuesday, Choi reported that she has finally hired the chief diversity officer two years after aldermen were told the $90,000-a-year job would be created.

She also reported the breakdown for the 1,971 employees hired so far this year.

They’re 61 percent male, 39 percent female, and 36 percent white, 30 percent black, 26 percent Latino and 5 percent Asian-American.