Campaign News

Charlotte Observer - July 6, 2014, by Mark Price - The creation of an official Charlotte ID card is still only a proposal, but critics are already lining up, including a national political action group that claims the city’s plan will “aid and abet illegal immigrants.”

Two immigration reform groups – the national Americans for Legal Immigration PAC and NC Listen – say they will press North Carolina legislators to stop cities from creating IDs, which are of most benefit to people who don’t have Social Security numbers.

In Charlotte, that population is made up largely of immigrants of all nationalities who are not in the country legally. They can’t get a Social Security number or apply for a driver’s license, and they are subject to arrest and deportation.

About a half-dozen U.S. cities have already created municipal IDs, which experts see as a way of dealing locally with immigration issues that aren’t being solved on a national level.

Charlotte, like many of those other cities, has an immigrant population that is outpacing the growth rate of both whites and blacks, leading to entire neighborhoods and schools where foreign-born people are in the majority.

City leaders say that accepting them as residents is a practical matter. However, the ID proposal remains controversial and critics question whether it’s legal.

“It’s against federal law to aid and abet people in the country illegally and if this isn’t aiding and abetting, I don’t know what is,” said Ron Woodard of NC Listen.

William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC is more blunt. “We will ask the General Assembly to stop any North Carolina city from helping illegal immigrants,” he said.

Charlotte Mayor Dan Clodfelter met with the city’s Immigrant Integration Task Force last month and asked the group to research a city ID program that can be used by all citizens to access community services.

The task force was created to craft policies that will make Charlotte more welcoming to immigrants of all nationalities, particularly those interested in starting businesses.

Recommendations – including whether to adopt a municipal ID program – are scheduled to be presented to the City Council in February.

Background checks at school

The idea of creating a city ID emerged in response to complaints from undocumented immigrant parents that they can’t interact with their own children in school classrooms.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools requires a Social Security number so it can do criminal background checks daily on people who want to do volunteer work in schools. The district recently announced a team is exploring alternative forms of identification that can be used to perform those criminal background checks. It may complete its work later this year.

CMS is independent from city government and would not be required to accept a municipal ID.

Still, Clodfelter said he hoped the new ID might help undocumented parents gain greater access to schools.

“This is a question for the entire community,” Clodfelter said in a statement. “The city, county, school system, law enforcement, community based nonprofits and other agencies need to work together on a review of the options to explore what may be feasible at the local level.”

Hector Vaca of the immigrant advocacy group ActionNC says he has doubts a city ID could be easily used for criminal background checks. To do that, he says the city would have to share ID card specifics with state and federal law enforcement databases – and that’s not necessarily something undocumented immigrants want to see happen.

ActionNC supports municipal IDs, he said, but is waiting to see what Charlotte leaders propose.

“This is another way to identify people, which is something even the police have said would be a good thing,” Vaca said. “I think it’s contradictory when anti-immigrant groups say we need to better identify the people who are in this country, and yet when you give them another tool that helps identify people, those critics say they don’t want it.”

Uses for municipal IDs

The Immigrant Integration Task Force intends to study municipal IDs created by other cities, including a program adopted last month by New York City. That program, which goes into effect at the end of the year, allows any New Yorker, “regardless of immigration status,” to get a government-issued photo identification card from the city. The cards are predicted to cost about $10 per person.

Proponents of such programs say the IDs can accomplish a lot of good, including making communities safer.

A study by the Center for Popular Democracy notes that immigrants who don’t have IDs are often unable to open bank accounts, which makes them easy targets for thieves. Such immigrants are also reluctant to report crimes and/or to visit doctors for conditions that might pose a community health threat, the report says.

Charlotte police say the IDs could also be useful in identifying victims of crimes.

Emily Tucker of Center for Popular Democracy says criticism of ID programs is often based on a mistaken belief that it is all about helping undocumented immigrants. In New York, city leaders are negotiating with museums, sports venues, businesses and banks to have benefits associated with city ID cards.

“Undocumented people may have been the inspiration initially, but I think it undercuts that effectiveness of (winning support for) the card,” she said.

“In New York, we decided to market it to a cross section of New Yorkers, including the LGBT community, homeless advocates, and even the American Civil Liberties Union, which wanted a form of ID with privacy protections: Something people wouldn’t be afraid to apply for.”

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Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/07/06/5025949/critics-lining-up-ag...

Starting next year, workers in Oregon will no longer get crazy work schedules —for the most part. On Tuesday, Gov. Kate Brown signed the Fair Work Week bill into law, making Oregon the first state to require large employers to give workers advanced notice of their schedules.

Read the full article here.

Safety & Health Magazine - April 18, 2014 - A recent study that questioned the usefulness of New York state’s “Scaffold Law” is flawed, according to a new report from a worker safety advocacy coalition.

In December, a study from State University of New York’s Rockefeller Institute of Government concluded that New York’s Labor Law 240 – which imposes a strict liability on employers for workplace injuries at height – drives up the cost of business without improving worker safety.

But an April 17 report from the Center for Popular Democracy and the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health called the Rockefeller study “biased,” noting that the study was paid for by the New York Civil Justice Institute, a group created by an alliance criticized as working on behalf of employer and industry interests.

The Rockefeller study confused correlation with causation, the two worker safety advocacy groups say, by claiming differences between worker injury rates in construction and non-construction industries in New York and elsewhere are entirely due to the Scaffold Law.

CPD and NYCOSH are partners in a newly launched Scaffold Safety Coalition, a group of workers, advocates and other organizations that have joined to defend the state’s Scaffold Law.

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Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said she would support changes to the top ranks of the Federal Reserve, an issue recently championed by progressive groups amid debate over how long the central bank should keep supporting the American economy.

The Fed is led by a seven-member board of governors based in Washington and a dozen regional bank presidents based across the country, from New York to Kansas City to San Francisco. The governors are nominated by the White House and approved by the Senate, but regional bank presidents are selected by their boards of directors, whose occupants are chosen by the banking industry and by the Fed governors in Washington.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Clinton’s campaign said she supports removing bankers from the boards of directors and increasing diversity within the Fed.

"The Federal Reserve is a vital institution for our economy and the well-being of our middle class, and the American people should have no doubt that the Fed is serving the public interest,” spokesman Jesse Ferguson said. “That's why Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole and that commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue.”

The statement puts Clinton on the same page as her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. In an op-ed in the New York Times in December, he said removing bankers from the Fed’s governance would mean “the foxes would no longer guard the henhouse.”

On Thursday, Sanders and top Democratic lawmakers called on the Fed to increase the number of minorities in leadership positions. They also urged the central bank to consider the high unemployment rate among some racial groups as it debates whether to keep pulling back its support for the American economy.

In a letter to Fed Chair Janet Yellen, the lawmakers argued that more minority representation would help broaden the Fed’s internal discussions about the health of the economy. In addition to Sanders, 10 senators signed the letter, including banking committee members Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. More than 100 congressmen joined the effort, which was led in the House by Michigan Rep. John Conyers and gained support from California Rep. Maxine Waters, ranking member of the House financial services committee.

“Given the critical linkage between monetary policy and the experiences of hardworking Americans, the importance of ensuring that such positions are filled by persons that reflect and represent the interests of our diverse country, cannot be understated,” the letter states. “When the voices of women, African-Americans, Latinos, and representatives of consumers and labor are excluded from key discussions, their interests are too often neglected.”

Donald Trump, the GOP’s presumptive nominee, did not return a request for comment.

The leaders of the Fed are responsible for steering the ship of the American economy, setting a benchmark interest rate that can influence the cost of borrowing money for everything from a car, to a home to a factory. They also regulate the country’s biggest banks and help ensure the nation's financial system can withstand another crisis, making them among the most influential policymakers in the world.

Those officials tend to be white males. Yellen is the first woman to serve as chair in the central bank’s 101-year history. Only three Fed governors have been African American, and there have been no black regional bank presidents. No one now in the top brass is Hispanic.

In addition, an analysis by the progressive Center for Popular Democracy found that 83 percent of the boards of directors are white and three-fourths are male. The group also found that 39 percent of directors come from the financial industry, while 11 percent are from community groups, labor organizations or academia.

There are nine seats on the boards of directors. Under current law, three are required to be filled by representatives of the banking industry. However, they are not allowed to participate in choosing reserve bank presidents — the officials who would be responsible for setting the nation’s monetary policy. The bank president must also win approval from the Fed's politically appointed board of governors, based in Washington.

In a statement, a spokesman for the Fed’s board of governors said it is committed to fostering diversity of all types within its leadership and that its track record has improved.

“To bring a variety of perspectives to Federal Reserve Bank and Branch boards, we have focused considerable attention in recent years on recruiting directors with diverse backgrounds and experience,” the statement said. “By law, we consider the interests of agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor, and consumers.  We also are aiming to increase ethnic and gender diversity.” 

The criticism comes in the midst of a controversial debate within the central bank. The Fed hiked interest rates in December for the first time since the Great Recession, citing the strength in the U.S. recovery. It had anticipated increasing rates four more times this year but has since downgraded that expectation amid weakness in the global economy. Investors around the world are now carefully watching to see what the Fed will do when it meets again in June.

Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen was joined by her three predecessors Ben Bernanke Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan at a discussion in New York City on the global economy. (Reuters)

The Center for Popular Democracy and its activist coalition, Fed Up, are pressuring the central bank not to raise its benchmark interest rate until the unemployment rate falls to 4 percent. Sanders has endorsed that target in the past, though the letter released Thursday said only that the central bank should give “due consideration” to the unevenness of the recovery.

“It is unacceptable that discussion of the job market for these populations would be an afterthought, or worse, ignored entirely, and we are concerned that the lack of balanced representation may be a significant cause of this oversight,” Democratic lawmakers said in their letter to Yellen.

Democrats have generally supported the central bank’s aggressive stimulus efforts following the 2008 financial crisis, but the prospect of higher interest rates is prompting some to question the Fed’s stance. In congressional testimony earlier this year, Yellen said there are limits to the central bank’s ability to help disadvantaged communities.

"It’s important to recognize that our powers, which involve setting interest rates, affecting financial conditions, are not targeted and can't be targeted at the experience of particular groups,” she said. “I think it always has been true and continues to be true that when the labor market improves, the experience of all groups does improve."

The Fed established an internal diversity office in 2011 as part of sweeping congressional reforms of the country’s financial system. The latest annual report for the Washington-based board of governors found minorities made up just 18 percent of top management in 2015, down from 21 percent the previous year. However, more than half of mid-level managers and administrative and support workers are minorities.

The report outlines several steps the Fed is taking to improve the recruitment and promotion of minority employees, such as a teaching and mentoring partnership with Howard University, a prestigious historically black college in the District.

By Ylan Q. Mui

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