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Council hearing weighs HOPE bill to expand hiring pathways for returning citizens; city HR warns of heavy administrative burdens
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Summary
Supporters said the HOPE Amendment Act would create clearer, more objective pathways for returning citizens into D.C. government jobs; the city's human-resources director warned the bill would impose heavy administrative, confidentiality and staffing burdens unless revised.
Supporters of the HOPE Amendment Act (Bill 206-185) told the Committee on Executive Administration and Labor on May 14 that the measure would increase public-employment pathways for returning citizens by formalizing hiring preferences for graduates of qualifying transitional employment programs, narrowing which criminal-history records are considered and improving transparency and appeals for applicants.
Councilmember Brooke Pinto, sponsor of the HOPE Amendment Act, framed the bill as part of a package to expand reentry employment and housing pathways. "This bill ensures that program participation and job performance are meaningfully considered during hiring," Pinto said, describing provisions intended to focus hiring decisions on rehabilitation and job readiness rather than remote or irrelevant convictions.
Advocate testimony: Katie McConville, policy counsel for the Council for Court Excellence, urged widening eligibility beyond programs run by District agencies and shortening the bill's look-back windows; she recommended expanding qualifying programs to include high-quality community providers such as Georgetown's Pivot Program and DC Central Kitchen's Culinary Job Training. McConville also urged that pending charges be excluded from the criminal-history report and that misdemeanors and felonies have shorter finite look-back periods (she suggested two years for misdemeanors and three for felonies). Zachary Rigoni, policy director for the National Reentry Network for Returning Citizens, likewise supported expanding the hiring preference beyond the relatively small number of participants in District-run transitional programs and shortening look-back periods to improve employment outcomes and reduce recidivism.
Government response and concerns: Charles Hall, Director of the D.C. Department of Human Resources (DCHR), said the District already follows many second-chance practices and cited data showing most applicants with prior law-enforcement interactions are found suitable: "In FY '24, approximately 98 percent of applicants who had at least 1 law enforcement interaction were found suitable," Hall said. DCHR raised several operational concerns: the bill would require DCHR to create and publish lists of qualifying transitional programs, generate a new criminal-history report, coordinate suitability reviews with agency representatives, and develop a position-specific relevant-screen protocol across thousands of job classifications. Hall said those steps would add staffing and timing burdens, expand the number of people with access to sensitive criminal-history information and could increase the risk of discrimination. He urged collaboration with the Council on more targeted alternatives.
Workforce pipeline data: DOES summarized its transitional-employment activities and said Project Empowerment and other programs place many participants into work experience and unsubsidized jobs. Dr. Hughes noted that since FY23, about 76% of Project Empowerment participants go on to employment (measured using DOES data definitions), and that DOES recently won a federal PROWD grant to expand services for federally incarcerated individuals returning to the community.
Key unresolved issues: The hearing surfaced tensions between advocates' push for broader, clearer pathways into public employment and the city's operational concerns about confidentiality, process complexity and staffing. Witnesses asked for clearer program definitions, data collection and targeted pilot approaches. DCHR requested time to work with Council staff to identify less administratively burdensome ways to meet the bill's goals.
Next steps: The committee left the record open until May 28 for written testimony. Staff and agency officials signaled they will work with the sponsor to refine the bill's language to reduce unintended operational consequences while preserving expanded opportunities for returning citizens.
