After the Post-Dispatch editorial “Fired Up” that ran on Tuesday, our city’s rapidly declining daily newspaper has aligned itself shamelessly with our city’s desperately spin-doctoring mayor, who is under attack for his divisive actions.

Editorial writer Kevin Horrigan’s lead was certainly written to get a jolt: “Wednesday will mark Dennis Jenkerson’s 100th day as chief of the St. Louis Fire Department. In that time, he has made more progress toward solving the department’s long-standing promotions problems than all of his predecessors combined.” You read that right: one former battalion chief has done more in 100 days than the 24 previous fire chiefs were able to achieve in the previous 150 years.

The editorial then goes on to list as accomplishments what mostly are proposals, and the most important of them (regarding the department’s hotly-contested testing procedures) fall under the authority of the City Department of Personnel, not the Fire Department. If the promotions process was “more political than personal” in the allegedly benighted years before Jenkerson, that fault lies with the Department of Personnel.

The new, proposed promotions process would be “color-blind,” according to Jenkerson. Attributing this statement to Jenkerson is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who knows the history of testing and promotions in the department. The department went 12 years (1985-1997) without a lawsuit filed regarding promotions, when the promotional process involved a multiple-choice test on general knowledge, a written fire scene component and a practical evaluation. Promotions from this testing method reflected department demographics of roughly 60 percent white and 40 percent black. However, in 1997 the City’s Department of Personnel moved to a strictly multiple-choice testing format that has been shown to favor white candidates and has resulted in a tangle of lawsuits.

It was this testing process that established the 2004 promotions list that ultimately cost Fire Chief Sherman George his job. After George was demoted, these promotions produced an historic shift in department leadership in favor of white firefighters. Of 32 promotions to captain, for example, 25 went to white firefighters and seven to blacks. Jenkerson has recently requested 15 more promotions off the list; of those, 11 are white and only four black.

It is the most insulting kind of misinformation to credit Jenkerson with favoring a “color-blind” promotions process, when (enabled by Mayor Francis G. Slay and Director of Public Safety Charles Bryson) he pushed through promotions from the most racially disparate and divisive list in department history.

And it is positively Orwellian to credit Jenkerson (as the Post does) with working to “take the politics out” of the promotions process. Jenkerson owes his position to the most naked display of power politics this city has seen in a generation. First, Slay promoted Bryson, a black man with no public-safety or executive experience, to demote George (the city’s first-ever black fire chief). Slay then appointed his personal friend Jenkerson to fire chief. At the time of his appointment, Jenkerson was a battalion chief. No battalion chief before Jenkerson has ever been eligible for promotion to fire chief. Every time the position has been open previously, only deputy chiefs were considered eligible. The most qualified deputy chief for the position that became Jenkerson’s was Deputy Chief Charles Coyle, an African American.

The final insult in the Post editorial is a repetition of Jenkerson and Bryson’s claims about a “memorandum of understanding” between the department, Local 73 and F.I.R.E. However, F.I.R.E. had no input in constructing this document and did not authorize it. F.I.R.E. rejected it outright as a publicity stunt, and this has been reported only in the St. Louis American. The Post has ignored the facts and printed publicity materials straight out of Room 200.

In response to the Post editorial, F.I.R.E. wrote to the American, “Francis Slay with the help of the Post-Dispatch wants to give the appearance of a united fire department. The fact of the matter is that the department is as divided as it has always been.”

If Jenkerson wants to take politics out of the promotions process, he should start by promoting Charles Coyle to fire chief and accept his own demotion back to battalion chief. As for the Post, we would urge an apology to Sherman George and the other 23 fire chiefs slandered in the bizarre rush to praise Jenkerson’s first 100 days, but we put that newspaper beyond hope as of now. Anyone willing to run against Slay knows now that they also will be running against the Post-Dispatch.