Peter Dybing spent four months sifting through 700 job applications looking for one that didn’t ask the question “Have you ever been convicted of a criminal offense?”
“I wanted to become a firefighter,” he said — but a robbery conviction at 18 made landing that first job an uphill struggle.
Dybing finally found a small, volunteer fire department in New Mexico that asked whether he’d been convicted of a crime in the last seven years. He was hired there and eventually worked his way up to a job as chief officer on a federal disaster response team.
Today, Dybing is an advocate of “ban the box,” a bill that would prohibit employers from asking about past criminal convictions on that initial application. Democrats have tried to pass it before, but it always died in the Republican-controlled Senate. Now, with Democrats holding the majority in both chambers of the statehouse and a more business-friendly version of the bill, this could be the year it happens.
Rep. Leslie Herod, D-Denver, says she’s confident that her new bill, HB19-1025, is on its way to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk. It passed out of the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday on an 8-3 vote.
Read the full story via The Denver Post.
