D.C. Councilman Marion Barry Tuesday withdrew legislation before the D.C. Council seeking to overturn a mayoral veto of a bill intended to prevent employers from discriminating against ex-offenders, promising instead to rewrite the legislation.
“Let me just send a signal clearly: This is not a defeat for ex-offender rights,” Barry, D-Ward 8, said Tuesday. “This is an affirmation of our determination that we do things right.”
The bill, which passed the council during its last legislative session on Dec. 19 subject to appropriation, had repeatedly been referred to as “badly written” by Councilman Phil Mendelson, D-at large. But Mendelson had also said that he agreed with the basic premise of the bill, titled “Human Rights for Ex-Offenders.”
The bill aimed to “prohibit employment discrimination based upon a status of previous incarceration, where the criminal record is unrelated to the job held or position sought and where there is evidence of rehabilitation.”
“I think Mr. Barry is right in pushing that we make re-entry easier and more likely to succeed,” Mendelson said Tuesday.
Mayor Anthony Williams signed the veto Jan. 2, writing in a letter to Council Chairman Vincent Gray that he saw too many problems with the bill because it “goes much further in a way that may compromise public safety or unnecessarily create issues of liability that could be litigated whenever an employer denies an ex-offender with employment.”
Barry called Williams’ letter stating his reason for the veto as “full of misinformation, innuendoes and fear-mongering,” because it says the legislation puts the public’s safety at risk.
“I cannot understand how this bill giving people some justice is going to compromise safety,” Barry said.
