On Tuesday, by unanimous vote, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution authorizing the County to perform an FBI background check for employment purposes, potentially for everyone working for and through the County. (See my previous posts about the resolution here and here.) A couple of year ago, I did an extensive survey and found that Las Vegas, Indianapolis, and Jacksonville are the only cities among the U.S. cities with population over 500,000 that do this.
So what did the County decide to do? Immediately, they will start doing an FBI check for everyone in the top 3 level positions, including directors, deputy directors, and their assistants. And they will also start looking into how to expand this check for everyone, including current employees. According to what I heard from Supervisor Ridley-Thomas' office, the only hold-up there seems to be the union's consent. Judging by the union's lukewarm support for the King Drew employees that were disciplined post facto for their criminal past, I am not hopeful that the union will stick up for its members that have a criminal history this time around either.
Stay tuned. We lost a battle, but the war goes on. And the next battleground will be the actual implementation of this background check. My goal is to get the County to conduct a comprehensive overview of its hiring policy regarding people with criminal records to find whether the policy is reasonably implemented (it isn't, in case you're wondering) and whether it unduly deters people with criminal records from applying for a position at the County (it does).
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