This line seems by far the most important. If this is provably true then the rest of the details are kinda irrelevant?
It reads to me like he was told this by someone who didn’t make the decision. It doesn’t sound like he was told formally by the hiring manager/committee.
But if it was said in a larger meeting, I hope there are people willing to swear under oath that it did happen, or there are meeting notes to be discovered. People will often not step forward with the truth, but will admit to it when subpoenaed.
True, but I guess that’s a confusing way to word it then.
If A has more years of experience and is an FSA, and B is an ASA with fewer years of experience but something else we find desirable (better communication skills, lives locally so we don’t have to pay for relocation, husband of the IT gal we all like way better than all of the other fluffheads in IT so we assume her husband is probably good too, friendlier, seems more committed to the company, whatever) then I wouldn’t describe A as being “objectively better qualified”.
To me “objectively better qualified” means that there is no possible valid argument in favor of hiring B over A.
I think of “qualified” in terms of skill set, experience, leadership style, and I think of many other things as much more subjective.
I have chosen to make an offer to someone because I felt that either 1. they would be more likely to accept, given what we were able to offer in compensation and how we felt they were connected to the company (there’s such a thing as overqualified, as an example), or 2. they had a personality type that would complement or fit in well with the team, nothing to do with their current skill set or ability to learn, or 3. we know candidate A has an outstanding offer deadline from another company of tomorrow but we can’t work with that timeline and they have indicated they aren’t going to ask the other company for more time, and candidate B was good enough that we’d be willing to make them an offer too, but we also need to interview candidate C and they aren’t available until next week, so we are ok with letting A go and keeping B as our top candidate to compare C to, things like that.
Or there are times where one candidate has maybe a different background or cultural experience that we feel would round out the current team’s perspectives in a way a more “qualified” candidate being considered hasn’t demonstrated.
And then of course, it isn’t often that the entire interviewing panel agrees with who the best candidate is, and it comes down to subjectivity on who we end up hiring simply because even when we talk about candidates “objectively”, objectivity isn’t possible.
While I would normally assume people aren’t so stupid as to explicitly state something so blatantly discriminatory, let’s take a look at this list of trustees:
NYCERS Board of Trustees:
Bryan Berge
Mayor’s Representative/ChairpersonHonorable Brad Lander
Comptroller of the City of New YorkHonorable Jumaane Williams
Public AdvocateHonorable Mark Levine
Manhattan Borough PresidentHonorable Antonio Reynoso
Brooklyn Borough PresidentHonorable Vanessa Gibson
Bronx Borough PresidentHonorable Donovan Richards Jr.
Queens Borough PresidentHonorable Vito Fossella
Staten Island Borough PresidentHenry Garrido
Executive Director, District Council 37, AFSCMERichard Davis
President, Transport Workers Union, Local 100Gregory Floyd
President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 237
This is not necessarily the exact same group of people who made the decision. But if it wasn’t them by name, it would likely be people in the same roles (borough president, union leader)
Basically, all of these people got their positions due to political position. They are probably well-connected locally. They may be used to saying stupid things and not getting called on it.
So, it may very well be one of the decision-makers did say something this stupid.
We all know that discriminatory decisions get made, and most people who do that and know it’s illegal figure out plausible reasoning to cover for it and say that.
There are also people who are making decisions for legit reasons, and share those. It’s difficult to tell these first two categories apart.
And then there are people who have never been called on their shit, and yeah, they may disclose they did something illegal. They really simplify matters.
But it could also be a third party who is just making things up.
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Not a single gaysian on the board.
That stuff can fly in public, and even public companies. It needs to be harshly minimized in gov’t positions. The way you described it is pretty much the textbook definition of nepotism. We like their wife, so they get hired. Again, fine in public/private companies. Very very bad in gov’t roles.
And as I suggested earlier, I’m guessing the ‘i like’ part overcame qualifications in this case.
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What about state-controlled universities? Partner hiring is definitely a thing, and often both are not nearly as desired by the university, but it’s offered as a benefit to get one of them in.
nepotism should be illegal
define nepotism. for a lower level job like intern, the candidates haven’t really proven themselves at all, and it’s a bit random. why not give preference to someone that a current employee knows and can say personally might be a good fit?
so, the lawyer should just skip over his qualifications in the allegations? 
I’m not seeing a smoking gun allegation of a direct quote, only a(n alleged) quote implying something to this effect.
Was homophobia/racism actually at play? Probably at least a little. Not right at all, assuming this is all true. But I don’t see the “bam, we got em” aspect of this at all.
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Well, someone on the list is representing queens…
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I’ll show myself out.
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FSA or bust. NYC deserves the best
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I wish they had that attitude with the subway.
It’s dirty and old but sadly probably one of the better subway systems in the US
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