State Personnel Board of Review v. City of Bay Village Civil Service Commission

503 N.E.2d 518, 28 Ohio St. 3d 214, 28 Ohio B. 298, 1986 Ohio LEXIS 825
CourtOhio Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 26, 1986
DocketNo. 86-388
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 503 N.E.2d 518 (State Personnel Board of Review v. City of Bay Village Civil Service Commission) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Ohio Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State Personnel Board of Review v. City of Bay Village Civil Service Commission, 503 N.E.2d 518, 28 Ohio St. 3d 214, 28 Ohio B. 298, 1986 Ohio LEXIS 825 (Ohio 1986).

Opinions

Holmes, J.

The sole issue before us is whether a state agency has investigative and removal authority over a municipal civil service commission when the charter of the municipality provides for local investigation, notice and hearing prior to removal of its commissioners. For the reasons stated below, we hold that the state agency does not have such authority.

[215]*215Section 7, Article XVIII of the Ohio Constitution provides:

“Any municipality may frame and adopt or amend a charter for its government and may, subject to the provisions of section 3 of this article, exercise thereunder all powers of local self-government.”

Section 3, Article XVIII provides:

“Municipalities shall have authority to exercise all powers of local self-government and to adopt and enforce within their limits such local police, sanitary and other similar regulations, as are not in conflict with general laws.”

The Charters of the cities of Bay Village1 and Cleveland2 permit the mayor to remove civil service commissioners for malfeasance, with notice and a hearing, and the Charter of the city of Lyndhurst3 grants the mayor general authority to appoint and remove public officers. However, the board argues it has authority over the cities’ civil service commissions pursuant to Section 10, Article XV,4 and Section 34, Article II,5 Ohio Constitution and R.C. 124.40 enacted pursuant to those constitutional provisions. R.C. 124.40(A) provides, in pertinent part:

“Whenever the board has reason to believe that a municipal civil service commission is violating or is failing to perform the duties imposed [216]*216upon it by law, or that any member of such municipal civil service commission is willfully or through culpable negligence violating the law or failing to perform his duties as a member of the commission, it shall institute an investigation, and if, in the judgment of the board, it finds any such violation or failure to perform the duties imposed by law, it shall make a report of such violation in writing to the chief executive authority of such city, which report shall be a public record.
“Upon the receipt of the report from the board, charging a municipal civil service commissioner with violating or failing to perform the duties imposed by law, or willfully or through culpable negligence violating the law by failure to perform his duties as a member of the municipal civil service commission, along with the evidence on which the report is based, the chief executive officer of the city shall forthwith remove the municipal civil service commissioner. In all cases of removal of a municipal civil service commissioner by the chief executive authority of any such city an appeal may be had to the court of common pleas ***.*** The chief executive authority of such city may at any time remove any municipal civil service commissioner for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office, having first given to the commissioner a copy of the charges against him and an opportunity to be publicly heard in person or by counsel in his own defense.” (Emphasis added.)

A municipality is considered to have general home-rule authority to regulate the appointment, removal, qualifications, compensation, and duties of its officers and employment. Benevolent Assn. v. Parma (1980), 61 Ohio St. 2d 375 [15 O.O.3d 450]; State, ex rel. Mullin, v. Mansfield (1971), 26 Ohio St. 2d 129 [55 O.O.2d 239]; and State, ex rel. Lentz, v. Edwards (1914), 90 Ohio St. 305. While this authority has been required to yield to general state laws where the municipal regulations have significant extraterritorial effects on areas of statewide concern, see, e.g., State, ex rel. Evans, v. Moore (1982), 69 Ohio St. 2d 88 [23 O.O.3d 145] (prevailing wage law superseded local wage regulation); State, ex rel. Villari, v. Bedford Hts. (1984), 11 Ohio St. 3d 222 (calculation of employee benefits); State, ex rel. Adkins, v. Sobb (1986), 26 Ohio St. 3d 46 (vacation leave credits); Kettering v. State Emp. Relations Bd. (1986), 26 Ohio St. 3d 50 (public employees collective bargaining), the state here cannot satisfy the first statewide concern requirement of “significant extraterritorial effects” set forth in State, ex rel. Evans, supra. Simply because a city’s civil service commission’s actions may affect employees beyond the city’s boundaries, e.g., city health district and school district employees,6 does not justify a state agency’s initiating an investigation, which could lead to [217]*217mandatory removal of a municipal civil service commissioner, when that municipality has lawfully provided reasonable procedures of its own for selection and removal of its commissioners. The make-up of such municipal commissions simply does not have significant extraterritorial effects. Those harmed by any alleged nonperformance of legal duties could pursue an action in mandamus.

The state also cannot satisfy the second prong of the statewide concern test, i.e.: “ * * [E]ven if there is a matter of local concern involved, if the regulation of the subject matter affects the general public of the state as a whole more than it does the local inhabitants the matter passes from what was a matter for local government to a matter of general state interest.’ ” (Emphasis deleted.) Kettering, supra, at 54.

While this court in Kettering, supra, may have found that the public employee labor strife was a proper subject for application of the statewide concern doctrine, that subject is much more far-reaching than is the subject of who sits on a local civil service commission. The investigation, appointment and removal of members of these commissions are matters of purely internal functioning as opposed to the public employee collective bargaining plan involved in Kettering. In the case sub judice, there is no statewide concern for the membership of municipalities’ civil service commissions and certainly none which outweighs the concern of the local inhabitants over the subject.

In addition to the statewide concern doctrine, appellant argues that local regulation of a municipal civil service commission must yield to conflicting state laws. This argument ignores the fact that municipal civil service commissions established under city charters are matters of local self-government, State, ex rel. Lentz, supra, and the fact that the phrase in the Home Rule Amendment, “as are not in conflict with general laws,” restricts only the municipality’s power to adopt “local police, sanitary and other similar regulations,” not its powers of local self-government. Dies Electric Co. v. Akron (1980), 62 Ohio St. 2d 322, 325 [16 O.O.3d 365], citing State, ex rel. Canada, v. Phillips (1958), 168 Ohio St. 191 [5 O.O.2d 481], paragraph four of the syllabus; and State, ex rel. Petit, v. Wagner (1960), 170 Ohio St. 297 [10 O.O.2d 344]. See, also, Benevolent Assn. v. Parma, supra, at 378 (municipal compensation ordinance is a matter of local self-government and prevails over conflicting general laws); and State, ex rel. Bindas, v. Andrish (1956), 165 Ohio St. 441 [60 O.O.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
503 N.E.2d 518, 28 Ohio St. 3d 214, 28 Ohio B. 298, 1986 Ohio LEXIS 825, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-personnel-board-of-review-v-city-of-bay-village-civil-service-ohio-1986.