April 23, 2013. The Courier-Journal.
More than 1,000 people packed the main floor of Memorial Auditorium on Monday night for the annual action assembly of Citizens of Louisville Organized and United Together.
People from varied religious congregations across the city combine their influence under the CLOUT acronym each year to seek commitments of action on issues of social justice from local officeholders.
This year’s action items were jobs for ex-criminal offenders and funding for the Louisville Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
“Tens of thousands of people in the Louisville metro area have difficulty becoming self-supporting because of some criminal charge on their record,” the Rev. Larry Sykes of Greater Good Hope Baptist Church said.
The whole community is affected financially “as we secure the cost of prosecuting and incarcerating again persons who have never been able to make a positive, productive start in rebuilding their lives due to a criminal record,” Sykes said.
CLOUT is calling on the Louisville Metro Council to enact an ordinance making the city a “ban the box” location, getting rid of checkboxes on initial job applications that ask whether a person has a criminal record.
Council members David James, Rick Blackwell, Attica Scott and Cheri Bryant Hamilton, along with Jefferson County Attorney Mike O’Connell, were asked individually at center stage whether they would sponsor and support on ordinance banning the box by the end of this year in city job applications and the job applications of contractors doing business with the city.
The council members all said yes. Blackwell said, “Metro government already does not have the box” as a matter of choice. “What we’re looking to do now is make it official.”
But O’Connell, who was asked whether he would lead an effort in the 2014 General Assembly to reform the state’s record expungement laws, said he would help but not lead on that issue.
The county attorney explained that his priorities for that legislative session are the opening to the public of juvenile and family court proceedings.
CLOUT also called on those officials to support creation of a dedicated $10 million annual funding source for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund through a 1 percent increase on insurance premiums or some other means.
The council members at the meeting previously sponsored an insurance ordinance, but it foundered after O’Connell said dedicating money from the premiums would be unconstitutional.
The organization has since asked Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway to provide an opinion on the constitutionality of dedicating the funds to the trust fund.
The council members all recommitted to supporting insurance premiums as a dedicated source of funding if Conway says it is constitutional or to work to find another dedicated source of funding if he does not. O’Connell said he would defer to Conway’s opinion when it is issued.
