Iowa City commission approves three firefighter promotional lists after captain raises bias concerns

Iowa City’s Civil Service Commission approved promotional lists for battalion chief, fire captain and lieutenant during a meeting where a city fire captain urged the commission to review the process for possible bias.

Bill Smoke, who introduced himself as a C-shift fire captain, told the commission he “feels that there’s an appearance of bias” in the battalion chief promotion process. He said three of the five panel members for his interview had been involved in a prior internal investigation of allegations he supervised; he told commissioners the investigation was resolved as unfounded and that two of those panel members were scoring members while one was an observer. Smoke also said a panelist interjected at the end of his interview when he asked whether any city initiative would benefit from fire-department support, which he said prevented him from finishing his answers on his terms.

City staff and a representative for firefighter interests urged clearer transparency around scoring, including the breakdown of categories, the scale used for scoring and the minimum passing score. Staff noted in the meeting record that testing was completed on Thursday and that the interview process did include tactical scenario–based questions developed with the fire department and counted in the panel’s scoring.

The city attorney (name not stated in the record) told the commission that while stakeholder input is valuable, the process under discussion had been approved by the commission previously (the attorney said the approval occurred in October) and argued it was not appropriate to wait until the scores and proposed list were available before raising procedural objections.

After discussion, motions were made and seconded to certify the promotional lists. The commission approved the battalion chief list, the fire captain list and the fire lieutenant list by voice vote; the chair announced that all three promotional lists were approved.

The record shows candidates and union representatives requested that HR provide candidate scores and category breakdowns promptly so applicants can understand why they did or did not qualify. No change to the certified lists was recorded at the meeting; commissioners indicated they may consider changes to the process for future cycles.