The Daily Monitor Leader

Held Rejects Brink Appeal
Says Job Abolished; Now Judicial Matter

Ruling that the Michigan Veterans' Preference Act does not apply where actual abolition of jobs is concerned Prosecutor Wilbur F. Held today rejected the petition of Karl O. Brink, former county engineer, that he be reinstated in his former capacity.

Citing six different Michigan court decisions to support his determination the prosecutor set forth his opinion that when the Macomb county road commission appointed Brink as consulting engineer on Jan. 3 of this year, at a salary of $1,000 annually and, automatically cancelled his former designation as road engineer at a salary of $3,700, it had removed the matter from within his jurisdiction.

"I am not passing," the prosecutor said, "on the question of whether or not the position was abolished by any claim of subterfuge as alleged in the petition as that question is not before me and I am not depriving the petitioner of any rights to a judicial hearing."

Brink, for 18 years an employee of the road department and a veteran of the First World War, had charged in his petition to the prosecutor that the road commission had not

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"Good faith" in abolishing his former more remunerative position. He had sought redress as provided by law under the Michigan Veterans' Preference Act.
The road commission, when the matter first came up for hearing one week ago, had challenged the right of Prosecutor Held to hold a hearing in the matter on the grounds that the road engineer's position had been abolished and that the matter is one for a judicial decision.