CPD IN THE NEWS

Source: The Baynet.com

The Maryland General Assembly overrode Governor Larry Hogan’s veto today on a bill that restores voting rights for approximately 40,000 Maryland citizens who live in their communities but were barred from voting because of a criminal conviction in their past. The law will go into effect on March 10, 2016 allowing all former felons who are out of prison to register and vote in Maryland’s upcoming April local and federal primaries.

Maryland law withheld the right to vote from individuals until they fully completed every requirement of their sentence, including those beyond incarceration, like probation and parole supervision. SB 340/HB980, introduced by Sen. Joan Carter Conway (D-Baltimore) and Del. Cory McCray (D-Baltimore), simplifies the process by allowing an individual to become eligible to vote upon release from prison or if they were never incarcerated.

After the law takes effect on March 10, affected Marylanders will have until April 5 – less than a month -- to register to vote in the April 26 primaries. New voters can also register through same-day registration during the early voting period of April 14 – 21. There will be at least 59 early voting centers throughout the state.

The bill was championed the Unlock the Vote coalition, led by Communities United with Out for Justice, the ACLU of Maryland, Common Cause Maryland, Maryland Working Families, MD State Conference of the NAACP, Maryland League of Women Voters, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, SEIU Local 500, SEIU 32BJ, SEIU Maryland & DC State Council, Prison Ministry Task Force of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, the Job Opportunities Task Force, the Center for Popular Democracy, Brennan Center for Justice, the Sentencing Project, the National NAACP and the NAACP National Voter Fund, Communication Workers of America, SAVE Our Votes, Colorofchange.org, People for the American Way, the Democracy Initiative, the American Probation and Parole Association and Common Cause.

“The Maryland General Assembly has opened up our democracy to the thousands of Marylanders who have returned home from prison and now have the right to vote. I know from experience that this legislation will have a powerful impact on our lives and in our communities,” said Perry Hopkins, a formerly incarcerated citizen and organizer with Communities United. “From the minute you are released from prison, you pay taxes, you are working to reintegrate back into society in a productive way and you deserve the full rights of citizenship. It’s just that simple. And today the Maryland General Assembly did the right thing and restored our rights.”

“Today’s override is a huge step forward for voting rights in Maryland. Governor Hogan suppressed the vote for an additional eight months with his veto so our next challenge is to quickly educate and register voters for the upcoming April 26 local and federal primaries” said Jane Henderson, executive director of Communities United. “Because of the confusing nature of the previous law, there is a lot of misinformation about if and when those with felonies can register and vote. We want all former felons to know that if you are home, you can vote. We have a short window of opportunity in March to reach and register newly enfranchised voters – whether in church, on the job, at recovery centers, at parole offices or in our neighborhoods – and we call on civic, civil rights and religious leaders to help us to reach these 40,000 newly enfranchised citizens."

“This is a victory for civil rights that comes at a critical moment for our state and our nation,” said Gerald Stansbury, President of the Maryland State Conference of the NAACP. “Today 40,000 Marylanders who have been locked out of the process by an unfair law and an unjust criminal justice system have regained a fundamental right of citizenship, the right to vote. The majority of citizens regaining their voting rights are African American and it has never been more important that their voices are heard in local government, the halls of the State House and by our federal representatives. I am grateful to the Maryland General Assembly for restoring the right to vote.”

“Democracy is on the march in Maryland. The Maryland General Assembly’s vote to restore the right to vote of more than 40,000 ex-offenders comes at a critical time for our democracy,” said Emma Greenman, Director of Voting Rights and Democracy at the Center for Popular Democracy. “Over 50 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, nearly 5.8 million Americans remain shut out of the democratic process because of a criminal conviction. Today Maryland unlocked the vote for folks reintegrating into their communities and lifted up their voices in our democracy.” “We’re seeing growing national momentum for voting rights restoration, and Maryland is the latest place to join in on this trend,” said Tomas Lopez, Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. “This legislation will give 40,000 Marylanders a second chance.”

The measure builds on recent bipartisan support for rights restoration around the country. Last year, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called on states to restore voting rights. Supporters from across the political spectrum have introduced bills in Congress to restore rights, including the Civil Rights Voting Restoration Act of 2015 from U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and the Democracy Restoration Act of 2014 from U.S. Sen.Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).

Over the past two decades, more than 20 states have improved their criminal disenfranchisement laws, including Maryland, which ended lifetime disenfranchisement in 2007. Like similar laws elsewhere in the United States, Maryland’s criminal disenfranchisement law has disproportionately impacted racial minorities. It is estimated that African Americans have comprised more than half of Maryland’s disenfranchised population. When the rights restoration bill becomes law, Maryland will be the newest addition in the national movement to restore voting rights to people who are released from prison, joining 13 states and the District of Columbia.

Gotham Gazette - January 23, 2014, by Amy Carroll & Javier Valdés - Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito have announced an expansion of paid sick leave coverage for hundreds of thousands of additional workers.

Their decision is a concrete move to confront and alleviate inequality, and bodes well for all New Yorkers, especially low-income workers and their families who live paycheck to paycheck.

The new administration’s proposal will guarantee paid sick leave to manufacturing workers and those at businesses of five or more employees, as well as provide for more aggressive enforcement by city agencies. These are critical first steps that recognize the dignity of workers who drive our city’s economy.

Leonardo Fernando is one of those workers. A 47-year-old immigrant who’s lived in Queens for nine years, he works 12-hour shifts at a car wash, in the heat and in the cold, to support his four children. Previously without paid sick days, he’s gone to work with the flu because he couldn’t afford to risk losing his job or missing a day’s pay. He will now be protected.

Of course, there’s still more to do through the legislative process. We would like to see all workers in New York have the right to paid sick time, and for the administration to strengthen enforcement through increased fines and provide workers the right to go to court when their rights are violated. But this is a great start.

In expanding the earned sick days law, which was fought tooth and nail by the Bloomberg administration and its corporate allies, Mayor de Blasio is honoring a campaign promise and governing as a progressive. And Speaker Mark-Viverito has signaled a clear break from her predecessor, who delayed the enactment of this law for years.

The shift in public policy is a direct result of years of work by workers, progressive advocates, community organizers, labor unions, and the faith community, who banded together to identify and elect new leaders in response to a widening income gap and exclusionary policies that didn’t help middle and working class families.

New York City is now a place where no worker will lose a job for taking a sick day.

What’s next?

Imagine a New York that’s more affordable, more inclusive, more fair. Imagine a city where all children have access to pre-school, a city that eliminates discriminatory policing, a city that leverages wealth to fight inequality and keep families in their homes.

The possibilities are endless. It’s a new day in New York.

Amy Carroll is the Deputy Director of The Center for Popular Democracy. Javier Valdés is the Co-Executive Director of Make The Road New York.

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Members of Congress involved in overseeing the country’s financial regulators agree that changes to the Federal Reserve’s governance model are overdue. But a Wednesday panel hearing revealed that lawmakers differ on what elements of the status quo need to be preserved.

Republicans on the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade argued that the Fed’s existing structure, which was enshrined in the 103-year-old Federal Reserve Act, is adequately representative when it comes to racial or gender makeup.

Wednesday’s hearing was the first chance Republican lawmakers had to discuss Fed reform proposals since both parties’ election platforms were adopted at their respective nominating conventions in July, when Democrats called for more diversity.

What the Fed needs instead, according to subcommittee chairman Bill Huizenga (R-Mich), is a new rules-based approach to monetary policymaking that’s outlined in the Financial CHOICE Act, the centerpiece of House GOP’s deregulatory agenda.

Those changes should not extend to major changes at the Fed that would, in effect, eliminate the representation of the banking industry on regional boards or take extraordinary measures to ensure greater diversity, as Democrats suggested in their 2016 election platform, Huizenga said.

He characterized Democratic proposals to overhaul the Fed’s governance structure as a “hostile takeover” of the central bank that’s only being undertaken to ensure high levels of inflation. “Democrats have constantly resisted reforms that would modernize the Federal Reserve, bringing much needed transparency to what most Americans consider an impossibly opaque institution,” Huizenga said.

He then referred to a bill he sponsors that would give Congress oversight responsibilities regarding monetary policy. “The Democrats on the other side of the aisle would like to double down on what Dodd-Frank started, co-opting the Federal Reserve district banks by subjecting them to the same politics that has kicked economic opportunity to the sidelines in the name of reinflating asset prices,” Huizenga said.

He had backup from Kansas City Fed President Esther George and Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker, both of whom testified at today’s hearing and said the central bank’s current governance structure facilitates adequate regional, commercial, ethnic and gender diversity.

“I remain convinced this is a question of accountability, and not of structure, of the Federal Reserve,” George told the panel, referencing the Fed’s overall efforts to be a representative body.

Lacker said he agreed with George, and added that there are “multiple dimensions” officials look at when selecting a regional Fed board.

Regional Fed boards are divided into three alphabetically organized classes. Member banks of each regional Fed select Class A directors to represent the banking industry and Class B directors to serve the public or other commercial interests. The Fed’s Board of Governors selects Class C directors, who are appointed to represent the public interest.

Democrats had their position supported by William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO, along with activists in the “Fed Up” coalition who attended the hearing wearing green t-shirts as a form of silent protest about the current Fed structure.

Spriggs and representatives from Fed Up argued that the lack of adequate racial representation on regional boards has prevented the bank from addressing higher rates of unemployment in African-American and Latino communities through monetary policy.

“We believe that when our voices our excluded from the conversation, then our interests are excluded,” said Ruben Lucio, a field organizer for the Fed Up Coalition, which is led by the left-leaning Center for Popular Democracy. Members of the coalition met with George during the Fed’s retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last month.

Lucio indicated that the Fed’s method for determining full employment — part of its dual mandate, along with price stability — might be due for a reevaluation.

“Whose unemployment are they looking at? Are they looking at overall unemployment? Are they talking about black and brown unemployment?” Lucio asked. “When you raise those interest rates because certain communities have recovered, and it’s fine because you’re scared about some threat of inflation, who are you impacting when those interest rates go up?”

Some lawmakers questioned the lopsided nature of the Fed’s regional districts. Reps. Denny Heck of Washington and Bill Foster of Illinois, both members of the business-friendly New Democrat Coalition, were joined by Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah) in floating the possibility of taking a new look at the geographic makeup of the regional boards.

Despite members having stated such clear positions on the issue of Fed governance, the likelihood of movement on any statutory changes to Fed governance is slim at this point. Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said she’s interested in taking an “objective” look at what changes might be needed, but she didn’t say what laws or regulations are needed to implement the changes sought by Democrats.

Huizenga, who reiterated to reporters afterward that he thinks the Fed’s regional directors should be selected as a “meritocracy,” struck a similar tone. “I don’t know that there’s any kind of consensus, as of yet, on that,” he said.

By Ryan Rainey

Source

1. City council member Kshama Sawant tried to pass a last-minute motion at yesterday’s full council meeting to “release the clerk file” on the hotel workers’ union initiative I-124, an initiative that mandates protections against sexual harassment of hotel housekeepers, workers who are predominantly women. (The initiative also seeks to improve workers’ health care coverage and protect unionized workers when their hotel changes ownership.)

Unite HERE Local 8, the hotel workers’ union that collected signatures for the measure, turned in more than 32,000 signatures last week, giving them more than enough to qualify for the ballot.

The council has until early August to send the initiative to the November ballot, and they planned to vote on it on next Monday July 25. By law, the council has three options when considering an initiative: they can send it to the voters, they can send it to the voters with an alternative, or they can simply approve the law themselves. However, they only have the option of approving a citizens’ initiative as law themselves one week after its introduced. In other words, they don’t have that option on July 25 when the the measure will be formally introduced. They could, however, approve it in its own right at the following full council meeting on Monday, August 2.

Sawant’s procedural move would have created the one week window, allowing the council to simply adopt the measure as an ordinance in its own right at the July 25 vote—something that would have saved the union an expensive fight at the ballot box fight.

Sawant said the law “was straight forward” and since “hotel workers have a hard life in general…I don’t think they need to spend the next several months” on a ballot fight.

Council members clearly weren’t comfortable approving a ballot measure in its own right without a comprehensive vetting and public process, something they don’t believe they can do in one or two weeks, and so, are likely, next week, to simply send the measure to the ballot next Monday.

 Sawant’s motion failed 6-2 (Sally Bagshaw, Tim Burgess, Bruce Harrell, Lisa Herbold, Rob Johnson, and Mike O’Brien voted no) and Debora Juarez voted with Sawant.

Juarez made it clear that she simply seconded Sawant’s resolution to make it possible to vote on the law itself on next week and not necessarily to indicate that she supported bypassing voters. Sawant said the law “was straight forward” and since “hotel workers have a hard life in general…I don’t think they need to spend the next several months” on a ballot fight.

2. A new study on unpredictable work schedules called “Scheduling Away our Health” found that: 

Hourly workers who received one week or less notice of their schedules are more likely to report their health as poor or fair (rather than good or excellent) than workers with more advance notice. About 20 percent of those receiving one week or less of schedule notice reported poor or fair health, compared to about 12 percent-13 percent for workers with more notice. 

 The study was done by a health care group called Human Impact Partners in conjunction with lefty group The Center for Popular Democracy.

Local group Working Washington is pushing the city council to pass a “secured scheduling” ordinance that would make employers give workers two weeks notice on schedules.

By JOSH FEIT 

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