Contractors exempt from new checks

LR officials decide sex offender hiring policy will apply only to city workers

Little Rock won't impose its new hiring restrictions that limit the employment of sex offenders on the private contractors it hires, City Manager Bruce Moore said Monday.

The city adopted a policy in June that bans the employment of Level 3 and 4 sex offenders and limits Level 1 and 2 offenders to certain positions that require them to work in a group setting and have minimal contact with the public. The policy also doesn't allow any offender to work at the Little Rock Zoo, in the Animal Services Division or in the Parks and Recreation Department because children frequent zoos, parks and the city's animal village.

Level 3 and 4 offenders are considered to be the more serious, violent offenders, city officials said. Two Level 3 offenders who were employed by the city in its Public Works Department were fired after the new policy took effect June 10. But the policy didn't address how the city would treat sex offenders employed by private contractors, so Moore met with the city's legal and finance teams to discuss that last month.

For example, if the city contracts with a company to do street work and that company employs a Level 3 offender, nothing in the city's policy prevents that person from doing city work even though it prohibits the city from directly hiring a Level 3 offender.

Moore said Monday that he has decided the policy will not be applied to third-party vendors and their employees.

"If we went down that path, we probably would be overstepping our authority in dealing with private enterprise and so we debated it internally a lot, but we just felt like the policy would only apply to city employees," Moore said. "We really weren't sure constitutionally if we could do something like that."

The city contracts with private companies for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's a company to complete street work while other times it's a public relations firm to assist with marketing on a city project. The city's providers of summer, after-school, and prevention and intervention programs for youth are also contracted.

City Attorney Tom Carpenter explained Monday that the city wasn't sure whether it legally could restrict employment of third-party vendors based on the sex offender status of that vendor's employees.

"There's a question about whether we can tell a private company who they can hire and who they can't," Carpenter said. "We concluded that we may have the authority, but we may not. We really are going to have to rely on them to take care of their workers, and that's what we are doing. If something goes awry, we'll hold the company responsible."

Carpenter said enforcement would be "extremely difficult" if the city were to impose its policy on private companies, noting that the city can't seek personnel records of a private business just because it has a contract with a company.

Metro on 08/19/2014

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