Tompkins Weekly

County measure will ‘ban the box’



By Jay Wrolstad
 
In the interest of reinforcing equitable hiring practices, the Tompkins County Legislature last week approved a resolution to “ban the box” and remove the criminal convictions disclosure line on county employment applications for civil service positions.
 
The measure also affects all county municipalities and school districts, except the City of Ithaca and the Ithaca City School District, as they all use the same online job application form. On that form is a line that states, “Have you ever been convicted of any crime, felony or misdemeanor?” with a box that is checked or left blank by applicants, that will now be eliminated.
 
This decision was made at the July 5 legislature meeting following a year of study on the issue and is supported by the county Personnel Department. It does not apply to applications for positions where certain convictions preclude employment in specified job titles. For most positions, criminal conviction disclosures and subsequent criminal history inquiries now will be delayed until later in the application process.
 
While an affirmative response to the criminal conviction disclosure has never been an automatic ban from consideration for employment, the concern is that asking the question at the beginning of the process could deter an individual from applying for jobs for which he or she might be eligible and qualified.
 
Procedures have been developed to ensure that, for most job titles, the Personnel Department receives attestations from applicants at the end of the hiring process and will then establish whether any such past convictions have relevance to the position in question.
 
“This has been under discussion for a while, and similar measures have been approved by New York State, which has the Fair Chance Act, New York City, and other governments around the country,” county Personnel Commissioner Amy Guererri says. She notes that Onondaga County, the City of Syracuse and the City of Rochester have approved similar measures.
 
“It’s all about fairness—we want to remove what could be an impediment to applying for jobs in the county,” Guererri says. “There are people who see that box on the application and decide not to apply for a position because they feel they do not meet the qualifications, but that is not usually the case.”
 
She notes that there are exceptions to the rule, as applications for public officer positions (such as elected and appointed officials), law enforcement jobs and other county department positions will keep the criminal disclosure line. “For those jobs there are requirements that prohibit hiring people with certain convictions, so there are separate applications, with and without the box,” Guererri says.
 
Questions regarding convictions will now be asked when the finalists from the pool of applicants for a position are interviewed. That information is kept by the Personnel Department and remains confidential, Guererri says. “We will still use the same application review process, but that question is now asked later in the process,” she says.
 
A criminal conviction is not necessarily a barrier for most civil service positions offered by the county and local municipalities, she adds, and each local government has the ability to set its own review standards depending upon the job description. “We want to balance the safety of the public with fairness to job applicants,” Guererri says.
The change will be implemented within the next one to two months, she says.
 
Jim Dennis is chairman of the legislature’s Budget, Capital and Personnel Committee, which was charged with evaluating the issue and made the recommendation to “ban the box.”
 
“This was initially discussed by the Public Safety Committee and then addressed by the Budget, Capital, and Personnel Committee,” he says. “We want to do this to encourage, not discourage, people who want to apply for our civil service jobs. There are background checks required for certain jobs, and those will still be conducted. And rather than use the convictions box on the application form we will do applicant evaluations during the interview process.”
 
The goal is to be as “risk-averse” as possible, says Dennis. “An individual’s criminal history will still be evaluated, as we don’t want to be sued when someone who is hired then violates the law.”
 
Because Tompkins County handles civil service testing for most area towns, villages and school districts, Dennis says, his committee approached personnel officials throughout the county to evaluate how this change would impact them. “Everyone was on board and supported the change. There was not much dissent,” he says.
 
“The goal is to provide an opportunity to people convicted of certain crimes to regroup, to help them find a job. Banning the box will encourage people to find good jobs, and get them involved in the employment process,” Dennis says.
 
Dennis and Guererri, along with other legislators, referenced former local journalist and criminal justice advocate Keri Blakinger, who brought the “ban the box” issue to the attention of the legislature in a presentation early last year.
 
The legislature will review the effectiveness of this change to the civil service employment process a year from now, Dennis says, to determine if it works as designed, with input from the Personnel Department.

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *