Well lets look at it from the towns perspective, if there were no age limits in a civil service place like NY state.
Town needs five full time firefighters because five guys are retiring. They are required by law to have a civil service test and it has to be open to citizens, the questions are general knowledge / aptitude questions. NO FIRE SERVICE RELATED QUESTIONS can be asked. Stuff like map reading, math .. simple stuff.
By NY State civil service law they MUST choose ONE from the top three candidates via score on the civil service test. Tests are graded in increments of 5 points ... 100 / 95 / 90 /85 /80 and so on. The top score guy gets 100 and second gets 95 and third highest gets an 90. Everybody else gets an 85 on the test. So they say we have a good list and can pick any of the three.
They do and he is 55 years old. They have to pay for his fire academy so he is gone for 3 months or so .. they HAVE to pay him while he is there and pay for the school.
Now they pick the next ....the 95 guy. Same thing 'cept he is 60 years old, off to school for three months while they pay him and pay for the school.
Same thing for the 90 score guy. He is also old at age 65.
The next two they hire are from the 85 score list. They can choose anybody in the score as long as they have three choices. Well there is 20 ppl to choose from and they take a couple of younger guys. Which of course they have to pay to send to fire school and wages too.
For all the money the town is spending for the first three fire fighters they MAY only get a few years before they retire or no longer can / want to do the job. As you can see it can be expensive to hire and train people.
Since in NY it cant really be held against you that you have not been to fire school they must hire one of the top three scores .. it can get expensive to keep hiring old guys all the time ... not hiring but FORCED to hire old guys all the time. Remember most of the legislators started out with local govt, pay taxes to local govt and have friends running local govt when they cry poverty about hring old guys ... they make an age restriction as part of it.
The quick answer to this is ... NYS has an age restriction but they make up for it by not holding it against you if you dont have fire certs. They pay to send you to school.
Here is a court case dealing with age limits in NYS:
Second Circuit upholds a N.Y. statutory age limit of 35 for new police officers; the law does not violate the ADEA. In 1986 the Congress amended the ADEA to provide state and local governments an exception covering the employment of law enforcement officers and firefighters. Pub. L. 99-592, 100 Stat. 3342, codified at 29 U.S. Code §623(i). Feldman v. Nassau County, #05-0444, 434 F.3d 177, 2006 U.S. App. Lexis 453, 97 FEP Cases (BNA) 449 (2d Cir. 2006). {N/R}
Many more listed at http://www.aele.org/law/Digests/empl3.html
Now off to my opinion ..... i don't think its good for US old ppl but i can see why they do it. I also can state it might be good for the community, but i know it sucks. The other option and know for some it no option at all ... move to a not much of an age restriction state like where i am ... Florida.
Unfortunately here 99% of the time you have to pay you OWN way thru fire school. Then look for a job.
