L.A. Council Urged to Keep Firefighters’ Residency Rule

Lifting a 25-year-old rule requiring firefighters to live in the city could make it harder to recruit minorities, according to a city Personnel Department report presented Tuesday.

City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said she asked for a report on the issue to determine if the opposite might be the case--that the requirement may be hindering the city meeting affirmative-action goals set by a court consent decree.

“With African Americans moving out of the city to areas like Moreno Valley, I thought maybe the residency requirement was a hindrance to hiring [goals],” Goldberg said.

But Goldberg said she will not press for the change when the issue comes before her Personnel Committee today.

William Fujioka, general manager of the Personnel Department, opposed changing the rule.

“Although there had been a shift in the African American population from some areas of Los Angeles city into the suburbs, the largest areas of African American representation in Los Angeles County appears to remain within the city boundaries,” Fujioka wrote in a report to the council.

He said the percentage of Los Angeles residents who are African American declined from 16.7% to 13% between 1980 and 1990. Meanwhile, the percentages of city residents who are Asian and Latino have increased.

Fujioka said lifting the residency requirement might make it harder for the city to meet affirmative-action goals set by the court.