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The head of the Union, Bob Nicks, of the city of Austin?s firefighters claims that he was intentionally excluded from receiving the results of the cadet exam. The fire department was being investigated by the Department of Justice for discriminatory practices and sought to remedy some of those practices by implementing an exam to screen in a balanced pool of candidates. The union president claims that in order to keep the results from him, city officials went so far as to put a gag order on the consultant used to help implement the exam. Mr. Nicks claims that his organization should have had an active role in shaping the practices and takes issue with some of the methods that the Department of Justice and the Fire Department used to boost minority turn-out, such as paying only minority candidates to take the exam and giving ?back pay? to minority candidates for future fire cadet classes. Mr. Nicks says that the methods are costing the city millions of extra dollars.