Expansion of the LA County's background check

At the end of the last month, the LA County CEO William Fujioka asked the Board of Supervisors to exercise the authority required to expand the County's check of its employees' criminal history and include the FBI national database. The request was placed on the agenda (Item 11) for this morning but was continued until next week.

Although the applicable law, California Penal Code § 11105(b), states that the provided FBI records must be vetted by the California DOJ to comply with the requirements of California Labor Code 432.7, several problems remain.

1. The FBI records are incomplete and inaccurate, as admitted by the US Attorney General's Office in its 2006 report to the Congress. See page 3.
2. The California DOJ has had a track record of releasing inaccurate reports, including those from the FBI, which is understandable, given the volume of requests they receive each day.
3. In the last 2 years or so, the California DOJ has been trying to comply with the requirements of the California Labor Code, but this too often results in a significant delay in the release of a report to the requesting agency, which in turn results in a negative consequence for the individual whose background is checked. For example, after waiting for a month or two, the agency would simply go ahead and hire the next person.

Obviously, my hope is that the County delay giving a go-ahead to this request by the CEO until and unless these problems are adequately addressed--either by the DOJ or the County. Meanwhile, though, one wonders why prompted the request in the first place?

It's hard to tell from the CEO's letter to the Board, but I infer that it's because the County is concerned about hiring people with criminal records through the South Bay WIB's ARRA implementation, because (initially, at least) the expanded background search will include only volunteers and non-union employees. If so, it wouldn't be surprising. The County is made of people, most of whom share an irrational fear and bias against people with criminal records. And why would it be surprising when their collective bias shows through at a time of change like this?

Update: Spending ARRA money in LA County

After weeks of playing phone tag with the person in charge of implementing the 10,000 jobs program, my executive director and I went down to the Board of Supervisors meeting this morning to ask for an active discussion. We didn't get it, but the aforementioned person came down from her meeting upstairs and gave me her cell phone number to call. We set a date for a meeting involving major stake holders for the 3rd week of July. I find this whole process of working with a local government slow and infuriating, but it teaches me patience, which I sorely lack, so that's good, I suppose.

Now, the newsworthy items that I learned during our impromptu side-bar meeting are that (1) the South Bay WIB has already found employment for 417 people, mostly in non-profit orgs; (2) the governor's threat to cut CalWORKs has stalled a full implementation of the program; (3) the ARRA money has not been disbursed yet; and (4) the interim solution is to run the program on a borrowed money with the hope of getting reimbursed once the ARRA money comes down.

I applaud the County's effort to find employment, even if temporary, for the unemployed. But I'm afraid that this well-meaning effort will end up amplifying existing barriers to employment for those with criminal records, rather than help alleviate it.

Spending ARRA money in LA County

Supervisor Knabe's motion to direct American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) money into LA County in the form of an expanded CalWORKs program ("Plan") was just passed by the LA County Board of Supervisors. I am not opposed to the idea of adding 10,000 new jobs in the County, even if they last only until June 2010. Many LA residents can use the job and the money.

The problem is that CalWORKs is run through local WorkSource and One Stop agencies (under the Workforce Investment Board of that local jurisdiction), and most, if not all, of them suffer from a performance-based requirement that a certain percentage of their clients be employed each year. I don't know where this requirement comes from, but it is institutionalized in every single WorkSource I talked to.

This pressure from the performance mandate creates an incentive for intake specialists to avoid taking on difficult cases, e.g. people with recent and/or extensive criminal history. And it leads also to the agencies turning a blind eye to employers that flagrantly violate existing laws against criminal history discrimination. This is why One-Stop in Alameda County is one of the organizations against whom National Employment Law Project (NELP), along with its allies (including A New Way of Life Reentry Project), asked Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) to investigate and file a commissioner's charge.

At today's LA County Board of Supervisors' meeting, I asked the Board to continue Supervisor Knabe's motion so that we can revise the language of the form contract between the County and employers participating in the program to reflect the Title VII requirement for finding a job-nexus to use an applican't criminal record. The Board declined to continue the motion, but the County has asked us to participate from now on in bringing the Plan in line with Title VII. This will most likely include staff and employer training, revised contracts, and additional tracking. Also important is that, through the hectic, last-minute negotiation with Supervisor Ridley-Thomas' office (via Richard Fajardo, a fellow UCLAW alum), we finally established a working relationship with the supervisor that replaced our erstwhile staunch ally, Supervisor Yvonne Burke.