Backers seek ‘Clean Slate’ passage in new year

More than 40 years ago, David Delancey made a grave mistake.

It landed him a two-decade prison term, and “rightfully so,” Delancey said last week.

“I was held accountable,” he said.

But despite doing the time and the more than two decades that have passed since his release, Delancey, now 60, has not yet fully reintegrated into the community. On account of his record, he’s been denied jobs for which he was told he was imminently qualified and also housing for him and his family, he said.

“All I want to do is help our society,” he said during a City Hall rally pushing for passage in January of so-called the “Clean Slate” bill. The legislation would expunge the vast majority of misdemeanor and felony convictions for people who have completed their sentences and stayed clear of the justice system for a certain number of years, depending on the offense. It also would seal their criminal records.

“But all we’re saying is give us a fair shot. Let us do the good work that we want to do without being held to perpetual punishment,” Delancey said.

Advocates and lawmakers say that about 2.3 million New Yorkers, or about 11 percent of the state’s population, are precluded from jobs, housing, education and otherwise publicly available benefits because of their records.

About 60 percent of people, or 1.4 million New Yorkers, with past criminal convictions would be eligible for automatic relief, with more becoming eligible over time, according to academic research. The research estimated that the annual earnings loss statewide attributable to past convictions is just over $7 billion.

“Clean State is an urgent economic justice and economic growth bill,” Andre Ward, the Associate Vice President of the David Rothenberg Center for Public Policy at The Fortune Society, said at the rally. Lost revenue, he said, “hurts economic growth and shrinks tax revenue.”

Compromise Reached with DOE

The bill, sponsored by State Senator Zellnor Myrie and Assembly Member Catalina Cruz, passed the Senate by a vote of 37 to 26 during the last legislative session, but did not come for a vote in the Assembly after the state Department of Education expressed serious misgivings about the legislation.

The DOE said at the time that, as written, the bill would prevent the department from carrying out its mandate to protect students and other members of the public unless its Office of School Personnel Review and Accountability and its Office of the Professions were added to the list of qualified agencies and others that could access the records.

Talks regarding between legislators and the DOE ensued and, while Cruz’s office late last week said discussions were ongoing, department officials said the matter had been successfully resolved.

“The Department worked with the bill sponsors to come to a successful resolution that ensures appropriate NYSED staff will be permitted to access and base decisions on criminal history information related to applicants for employment clearance, certification, licensure, and those licensees under investigation for alleged violations or harm to the public,” department officials said in an email.

The new version of the bill must pass both houses before it goes to Governor Kathy Hochul’s desk for her signature. Hochul earlier this year said she would support the legislation provided “reasonable exceptions” are made for certain categories of employment.

Cruz said her bill will give people who have not been afforded a chance to access housing, jobs and education to which they are entitled. “That is what this bill is about. Economic development for the city,” she said.

Offenses that would not be expunged include those requiring a person to register as a sex offender, and those for which a person is sentenced to life behind bars. Besides waiting periods — people must be conviction-free for three years following sentencing in the case misdemeanor convictions and for seven years in the case of a felony conviction — the bill’s provisions require that those seeking expungement not have pending criminal charges in New York State and not be on probation or parole for the eligible conviction.

Bill has its critics

Rebecca Lamorte, the legislative and communications coordinator of Construction & General Building Laborers’ Local 79, said passage was imperative “because this is a labor justice issue, this is an economic justice issue.”

Construction, she added, “is one of the few industries where your past does not dictate your future.

“And at Local 79, we’ve seen firsthand how deeply exploited justice-affected workers are because of the barriers to employment, the barriers to housing, the barriers to basic needs so many of us take for granted.”

The Fortune’s Society’s Ward also noted that a number of companies, including Verizon, JPMorgan Chase and Microsoft, along with labor unions throughout the state support the legislation. “But right now, today, when a person successfully completes their sentence, they return to their community only to find that doors are closed to them in perpetuity because of their conviction record,” he said.

State Senator Andrew Gounardes, a co-sponsor since the legislation’s origination in the 2019-20 legislative session, said that one of society’s basic contracts dictates that once people have completed their prison sentences, they are allowed back into the community, “with dignity, with respect.”

“But we know that for far too many New Yorkers, millions of New Yorkers, 2.3 million New Yorkers, that promise is not being upheld. That promise is being denied,” Gounardes, who represents southern Brooklyn, said at the rally.

The legislation, though, has its critics.

The executive director of the New York State District Attorneys Association, Morgan Bitton, last year argued that the legislation did not adequately differentiate among criminal offenses. “Common-sense clean-slate legislation should allow employers to seek records for specific offenses related to certain areas of employment,” she wrote in a New York Post opinion piece. “This could include those seeking jobs related to child care, elder care, transportation and financial industries. Wouldn’t you want to know if the school-bus driver has repeated convictions for drunk driving?”

And district attorneys have said the legislation’s intent is commendable, some have also argued the statute is overly broad. Bronx DA Darcel Clark has suggested narrowing the scope of automatic expungements to include most misdemeanors and low-level nonviolent felonies, and leave it to judges to decide whether and when violent felony convictions should be expunged and sealed.