Thursday’s City Commission meeting will feature vote on Fair Chance Hiring ordinance that will prohibit employers from performing criminal background screenings before extending a job offer

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – During the afternoon portion of the November 17 Gainesville City Commission meeting, the commission will vote on the first reading of a “Fair Chance Hiring” ordinance.

The commission, sitting as the General Policy Committee (GPC), first heard a presentation on the proposed ordinance on May 13, 2021, from Community Spring, a local nonprofit that is “dedicated to economic justice.” Community Spring is also the organization that is administering a guaranteed income program as part of an agreement between the nonprofit, Gainesville Mayor Lauren Poe, and Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.

The proposed ordinance would bar local businesses with 15 or more employees from performing criminal background screenings on job applicants prior to extending an offer of employment.  

On February 24, 2022, the GPC considered a first draft of the proposed ordinance and directed staff to engage with local businesses and the Chamber of Commerce and also perform a study to determine the impact of the proposed ordinance on local businesses. If the study has been performed, it was not presented to GPC or posted in the agenda for Thursday’s meeting (Alachua Chronicle has submitted a request for a copy of the study).

GPC heard a presentation from the City Office of Equity and Inclusion on October 13 on its engagement with the Chamber of Commerce and local businesses and directed the City Attorney to bring back a final version of the ordinance for first reading, which is now scheduled for the November 17 meeting.

During that presentation, Zeriah Fulston, Interim Director of Equity and Inclusion, told the GPC that “The business community had a lot of questions… a lot of concerns about the ordinance.” He said those concerns included wasting time by finding out about issues late in the hiring process and costs to smaller employers. The Business Leaders Roundtable also provided feedback that the language of the ordinance was too vague and a comment that the ordinance seemed like “a solution in search of a problem.”

Mayor Poe reassured the business owners at the October GPC meeting, “You know, it’s still the hiring manager or proprietor of the business who decides who they hire.”

Vicki Gervickas, the Director for Public Policy and Grassroots Engagement of the Greater Gainesville Chamber, told the GPC, “We are all in agreement that we have a labor problem, and any way to get outside the box, to get more employees matched with employers, we have incredible enthusiasm for that. I would say the overall tone that I have heard from the employers is that this ordinance is perhaps not the most effective way to do that, that it’s a little bit of a solution looking for a problem.” 

Gervickas said that many large employers are already conducting background checks farther into the hiring process, particularly those with human resources departments that “have the capacity to make these kinds of changes without there being too many hiccups.” She said, “We’re adding a layer of regulation and rules” for small businesses “that are going to make it a little more difficult to connect them with the employers.”

Gervickas recommended focusing on education as opposed to an ordinance, including more workshops with employers in various industries, adding, “There was quite a bit of concern about the consultant-type of employers that bring in workers for our larger employers.” She agreed that people with criminal histories face many roadblocks in looking for employment but said that making employers more aware of these problems might be more effective than an ordinance that takes a punitive approach.

She later clarified that the Chamber was concerned that the ordinance was “a little one-size-fits-all for the wide variety of businesses we have in the community and that there perhaps was a more efficient way to do that kind of matching without putting in paperwork and more layers of interviews and going down the process of getting employed, when what we all want together is to make sure that people get jobs… The problem is real, it’s just that we think the problem is matching the people and widening the pool of employees, which we are anxious to do.”

Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut proposed implementing a pilot program for a year, but her suggestion did not make it into the motion. 

Poe said he hoped the City Commission would get updates after 6 months and after a year to see “how many folks have not been in compliance, what’s been done in response once somebody has been cited.” He said that he expected that the few businesses that received complaints would quickly come into compliance.

Poe said language would be added to the draft ordinance, clarifying that “employers retain the discretion to determine whether an individual is suitable for the job, based on the employer’s individualized assessment of that individual’s criminal history.” That language is, in fact, in the proposed ordinance that will be considered on Thursday. 

The ordinance does not apply to a job for which federal, state, or local law, or compliance with legally mandated insurance or bond requirement disqualifies an individual based on criminal history.

The first-reading vote on the ordinance is scheduled for the afternoon session (which typically begins at 1:00 p.m.) of Thursday’s City Commission meeting. The ordinance can be read here.