Community Group Blasts City Non-Enforcement
Monday, March 21, 2011
The spokesperson for a local community organization says his group has no problems heading back to court with the City of Providence if the city doesn’t begin to make good on a five-year old ordinance that requires local employers to focus on hiring unemployed residents.
Fred Ordoñez, the Executive Director of Direct Action for Rights and Equality, told GoLocalProv there is no excuse for the city waiting this long to implement the resolution.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“After spending $250,000 per year for five years on the First Source program,” Ordoñez said in a statement. “The Planning Department cannot or will not produce an accurate list of covered employers, cannot state with any accuracy how many people have been hired from the First Source list, and has consistently failed to file its own reports on the program with the City Council as required by the ordinance.”
Planning Department Withheld Information
Last week, GoLocalProv obtained a report filed by former Internal Auditor James Lombardi that said a number of city companies are out of compliance with the ordinance. The report suggested that many organizations receiving community grant money were not meeting requirements of the law.
In the report, Lombardi suggested a number of ways to make the program more effective, including creating a website and imposing consequences on companies that do not file necessary reports with the city.
But DARE says the city Planning Department deliberately steered Lombardi away from major corporations, instead pointing the finger at many nonprofits and small organizations.
“We’re disturbed that the auditor found that a substantial number of organizations have never filed any quarterly reports with the Planning Department,” DARE member Judith Reilly said. “But we are outraged to learn that the Planning Department withheld from the auditor the vast number of employers covered by First Source because of multi-million dollar tax stabilization packages, like GTech, Blue Cross, and the Providence Renaissance Hotel.”
Council President Reacts
City Council President Michael Solomon said the Council is taking these revelations seriously and they are meeting to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the program.
“The Council is certainly concerned with the lack of compliance with the First Source ordinance. In response to this situation, we have formed a commission to review the compliance issues as well as the effectiveness of the program,” Solomon said in a statement to GoLocalProv. “Going forward, businesses participating in the program need to understand that submitting compliance reports and meeting the mandates of the program are mandatory.”
Back To Court?
In 2006, a group led by former councilman and state Rep. David Segal took Mayor David Cicilline to court over noncompliance with First Source. A judge ruled in the group’s favor. But to Ordoñez not much has changed, especially when it comes to the people running the program.
“DARE demands accountability from the city and we are very concerned that the same Planning Department personnel who have done such an incompetent job thus far have been tasked by the new administration with continued responsibility for First Source,” Ordoñez said. “We are hopeful that the Council and mayor will have a community-based First Source Oversight Commission set up within the next two weeks to make recommendations to implement First Source properly, five years after the court order. However, if the new administration is not serious about enforcing First Source, DARE has no problem joining its allies in a return trip to court.”
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