With less than two months to meet a state law’s deadline, the city of South Bend wants to change how it handles personnel matters for police and firefighters.
When a South Bend police officer or firefighter needs to be hired, fired, disciplined, promoted or demoted, it’s now done by the city’s Board of Public Safety. The mayor appoints the board’s five members, a process spelled out by Indiana law.
But a law passed last year allows cities to instead create merit boards to handle these matters for police and firefighters. It’s an effort to keep politics out of their personnel decisions.
Under the merit system, the board is also five members but the mayor can only appoint two members; the common council appoints a member, and officers or firefighters get to picks two members.
The law gives departments until the end of this year to either adopt or reject a merit system. If a city does neither, they automatically have a merit system implemented and must appoint a board to comply with it.
South Bend firefighters are opting to let a merit system automatically kick in, meaning the Board of Public Safety would dissolve.
Mayor James Mueller, Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski and the police and firefighter unions all support the change.
The council will consider first reading of the bill at its next meeting Wednesday.
