Day in Washington

Recidivism programs and advocates focus on work and housing but often do not address the mental health and/or substance abuse issues (or indeed any disability); disability programs do not address the very real problem of the interaction of these individuals with the criminal justice system. Unless both aspects are looked at, and until both communities can recognize the multiple facets and identities  - the intersectionality - of this population, we will continue to fail people with disabilities who are connected to the criminal justice system.

Over the past few years, a growing list of city, state and local governments; organizations; and private companies have come forward to support Ban the Box. It's an initiative to persuade employers to remove the question Have you been convicted? from job applications and delay that inquiry until the final stages of the hiring process. The goal is for employers to make hiring decisions based on a candidate's skills and qualifications, not their past transgressions. This month, President Obama took an historic step by directing the Office of Personnel Management to take action to ban the box in federal employment. As a result, OPM will modify its rules to delay inquiries into criminal history until later in the hiring process.

Encouraging employers to make this shift is critical. An estimated 70 million Americans €” one in four adults €” have a criminal record. Employment is a stabilizing factor in anyone's life, providing a sense of structure and responsibility, and it's strongly correlated with reduced recidivism for those reintegrating into the community following incarceration. Because employers often hesitate to hire an ex-offender, not having to check that box can make a massive difference.

Marsha Temple, of Los Angeles' Integrated Recovery Network, knows well the stories of many of the individuals for whom the box is a major barrier. For more than 15 years, she has worked to improve mental health services for people who are homeless and/or have mental health disorders €” about 44 percent of whom have spent time in jail, prison or community corrections. In California alone, there are about 33,000 prisoners with mental health disorders, roughly 30 percent of the incarcerated population.

As a part of the Add Us In initiative funded by the Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy, Temple has spent the last five years focusing on providing employment services to difficult-to-place candidates with disabilities, including those who have a history of addiction and other mental health disorders, which are so often intertwined with homelessness and incarceration.

One example is K.L., a 38-year-old Latina who at an early age became involved with drugs and gangs, eventually landing in prison. Upon release,

Hello and welcome to Day in Washington, your disability policy podcast. I'm your host Day Al-Mohamed working to make sure you stay informed.

In early January, the House of Representatives passed a package of changes to their standing rules. These changes would supposedly enhance the House's ability to exercise its €˜power of the purse'. (Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA)). Adoption of procedural rules is pretty normal for any new congress.  However, House Resolution 5, which in addition to attempting to move the Office of Congressional Ethics under more direct Congressional control (and which received significant amounts of public outcry), there was also another provision that's received some media coverage in Washington, but didn't quite capture the same level of attention. The Holman Rule.

The final version of House Resolution 5 includes the reinstatement of a very old Rule from 1876, called the Holman Rule. Let me start with some background. Congress tends to work along two tracks: authorizing and appropriating. Authorizing legislation is what we usually think of when we say legislation or bills. Congress members vote on language that authorizes specific events, agencies, projects etc. The second track, which most people might not realize is quite so separate is appropriations legislation which is where congress members vote on what to fund and how much to fund it.

The Holman Rule is specific to the appropriations track. It allows lawmakers to bring an amendment to an appropriations bill directly to the House floor that retrenches (meaning reduces) expenditures by:

the reduction of amounts of money in the bill;

the reduction of the number and salary of the officers of the United States; or

the reduction of the compensation of any person paid out of the Treasury of the United States.

At its core, it would seem the rule is to address saving money and (from a historical perspective) was used to help get rid of corrupt customs officials. Let me give an example of this. In the 1932 Treasury and Post Office Departments appropriations, there was a provision that said:

The offices of comptrollers of customs, surveyors of customs, and appraisers of merchandise (except the appraiser of merchandise at the port of New York), 29 in all, with annual salaries aggregating $153,800, are hereby abolished. The duties imposed by law and regulation upon comptrollers, surveyors, and appraisers of customs, their assistants and deputies (except the appraiser, his assistants and deputies at the port of New York) are hereby transferred to, imposed upon, and continued in positions, now established in the Customs Service by or pursuant to law, as the Secretary of the Treasury by appropriate regulation shall specify. . . .

So now that you have an idea of how it works, let's look at how things can get complicated.

The goal of the rule is to take care of bloated expenditures and to ensure that the executive branch can address poor actors when it comes to agencies. This is about accountability and it allows any rank and file member to focus on specific programs and offices they deem to be wasteful.

An example cited by the Washington Examiner (and if anyone has an example given by a legislator who voted for the amendment I'd prefer that), is the story of Elizabeth Rivera of Puerto Rico. She worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs. After pleading guilty to involvement in an armed robbery she was able to get her job back with the agency and win back pay for the period when she had been off the job.  I have to admit, I think that would be great use of the Holman Rule.

Day in Washington #Disability #Policy Podcast. #GirlScouts Refuses to Provide #Interpreter Services for #Deaf Member. Have they forgotten their own history?! They were founded by a woman with a significant hearing impairment!