This appears to be for season or temp employees, but doesn't mention permanent employees. Although I believe family members should be able to apply and use other family members who work for the city as reference, I still believe the actual hiring should come down to qualification. The culture of hiring family members will only create an undervisfied work environment, which will only hamper our cities ability to move forward.

Zoom...Your Webster definition of nepotism is correct however ,with-in the hiring practice ,the term nepotism refers to the hiring of any city employee's relative. This is with or without favoritism. In many cities and I believe the practice in some of the City of Janesville departments there was no full time hiring of relatives ,especially if that relative was a direct supervisor.
I believe what Winwenz was saying,and may have been misquoted,was the hiring of city employees relatives will still be permitted but without favoritism.

It may not have been effectively improper, but at a minimum it had the "appearance of impropriety."

The 2006 e-mail is nepotism, as was the hiring of the City Managers relative. The City Manager has an indirect supervisor-subordinate relationship will ALL city employees.

The article is not clear, and I think the Gazette has it wrong when they describe the official policy as allowing nepotism.

Remember that nepotism is a "showing of favoritism toward relatives and friends, based upon that relationship, rather than on an objective evaluation of ability, meritocracy or suitability".

Here is a description of the official policy:
"According to the policy in Chapter 5.02 of the personnel policy manual, a member of an employee’s immediate family will be considered for employment provided that the applicant possesses the qualifications for employment.

Immediate family members may not be hired if the employment would:
-- Create either a conflicting direct or indirect supervisor-subordinate relationship with a family member.
-- Create either an actual conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Immediate family includes the employee’s spouse, siblings, parents, children, step-children, in-laws and any other member of the employee’s household."
http://www.gazettextra.com/news/2008/aug...

The number of employees is quite insignificant. It doesn't appear to be much different than telling your best friend that you know of a job opening in the company where you work and them using your name as a reference.

If you are a good employee, chances are your friends and relatives and people you associate with are, as well. I'm fairly confident that while the written policy was wrong, the practice of hiring based on your references and knowing someone already employed by said company/entity goes on on a regular basis in business everywhere.

Just to point out gm has been doing that for years its the same concept

I hope the larger lesson isn't being missed here. Something that was wrong was corrected in a highly civilized way. That speaks well for our system and our situation here.

No your not missing something its like gm you have to know or be related to someone to get a job like that thats how it is

Is the statement "The official policy allows nepotism, but doesn't encourage it" a misprint? You've got to be kidding me. This is not a private business. The city is a public entity with wages provided by taxpayers, whose children should have the same right to those jobs. Am I wrong here? Am I missing something?

The unofficial policy of favoring city employee family members for temporary city jobs has been terminated by the temporary city administrator, but nepotism is still O.K. with the acting head honcho.
The city council needs to deal with this. They shouldn’t stand by and allow the acting city manager to provide cover for them. These kinds of issues are what council members are elected to decide, particularly since they have yet to hire a permanent city manager.

Informally changing an informal policy doesn't sound like much change at all. (...if I'm reading the article right, of course.)

If the official policy allows nepotism but doesn't encourage it, how are family relationships legally meant to be handled in the hiring process? Is it decided by individual departments or supervisors, by the individuals doing the hiring, or by something else?