Key Civil Service Advocate
Merit Council Founder Dies

By RICHARD STEIER

Alfred Engel, whose frustration over being bypassed for a promotion after he questioned city streetlight contracts led him to found the Civil Service Merit Council, died Feb. 1 at age 89.

A PASSION FOR MERIT: Al Engel (seen here in 1987 photo) worked to ensure that the principles of the civil service hiring system were upheld, bucking the tendencies of elected officials to allow favoritism and patronage to take precedence.

From its inception 35 years ago, the Merit Council has advocated for adherence to the civil service exam system and strict use of the lists resulting from those tests. It has waged a lonely and often futile struggle against the intrusion of political considerations into appointments and promotions at city agencies, and the proliferation of provisional job-holders.

An Early Lesson

Mr. Engel gained first-hand knowledge of the way the system could be corrupted soon after he was graduated from City College in 1938 with a degree in engineering.

As he recounted it to this newspaper in a 1987 interview, he was called for a position with the Federal Government and discovered that the interview process was slightly different than advertised. Rather than speak to an agency official, he had to talk to his local Congressman - and was first required to pay $5 to a Democratic Party functionary who arranged the meeting. He did not get the job.

But Mr. Engel subsequently was hired as a Junior Naval Architect at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, a post he left in 1940 to join city government as a Junior Electrical Engineer in the old Public Works Department. Eight years later, he was promoted to Assistant Electrical Engineer, and in 1952 he transferred to what was then the Bureau of the Budget.

Involved in 911 Upgrade

He worked in the agency's Engineering Division, scrutinizing public works and procurement contracts, and estimated that he saved the city as much as $50 million a year. Mr. Engel also had a hand in improving the 911 emergency system, the installation of two-way police and fire call-boxes to minimize responses to false alarms, and brighter streetlights.

While scrutinizing the city's streetlight contracts around 1970, he noticed that the same two firms had performed the work for the previous 25 years, and he recommended an audit by the City Comptroller's Office to see whether the deals were cost-efficient.

At the time, Mr. Engel was the chapter chair of Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375 of District Council 37, and it was at his urging that the first exam for Administrative Engineer was held. He was the top scorer on the resulting list that was issued in 1971, but he was passed over for promotion, and he suspected it was because he had pressed for the audit.

Others Victimized

When his superiors at the Tech Guild did not rally behind him, Mr. Engel consulted a lawyer, then placed two small ads in this newspaper announcing a meeting for persons who believed the 1-in-3 rule in the Civil Service Law had led to their being passed over for promotion for reasons other than their qualifications. More than 100 people showed up, and the Merit Council was born.

"To me, he was one of the most intelligent, gracious individuals," said Louis G. Albano, who as president of the Tech Guild from 1981 to 1998 and an activist in the Merit Council came to know Mr. Engel well over the years. "He was someone who, if he entered your life, you were very fortunate."

Eventually the street-lighting contract audit was performed and Mr. Engel got his promotion to Administrative Engineer. That battle has echoes in a pending racketeering case in which ex-Assemblyman and AFL-CIO New York City Central Labor Council President Brian M. McLaughlin is accused of participating in a bid-rigging scheme involving the contracts to maintain and repair city streetlights. Among those implicated in the alleged scheme is the son of former Mayor Abraham D. Beame, who was City Comptroller at the time that Mr. Engel pressed that office to audit the contracts.

Mr. Engel eventually became Deputy Assistant Director of what had been renamed the Mayor's Office of Management and Budget. He retired in 1981, but remained active at the Merit Council until he moved to Pennsylvania six years later, and periodically submitted articles to the group through the late 1990s, Mr. Albano said.

Mr. Engel also helped prepare a series of articles for the DC 37 newspaper, the Public Employee Press, during the 1980s that demonstrated that city agencies frequently wound up spending more money when they gave engineering and architectural work to outside consultants than if the jobs had remained in-house.

He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Anne, and a daughter, Robin.