CITYWATCH At long last, local hiring ordinance moves forward BY IAN DONNIS

Within weeks of a July 15 protest behind City Hall, the Cicilline administration allocated $150,000 in the 2006 budget to implement First Source, a local hiring ordinance that was adopted in 1985 but never used. The money, $100,000 less than the amount called for in the ordinance, includes $50,000 to staff the long-overdue program, and $100,000 to support it.

"Our biggest concern is that it actually start being implemented and the list [of people seeking jobs] start being used," says Sara Mersha, executive director of the activist group Direct Action for Rights & Equality, which has steadily advocated for First Source. "We’re glad the city has allocated money toward it, and that the city has specifically agreed to ensure that some of the money will go toward hiring a staff person who will implement the program . . . We’ll be even more happy when we start seeing the results. We do see it as a victory — that the city was able to listen to what the community said."

Working with Rhode Island Jobs With Justice and city councilors David Segal and Miguel Luna, DARE has pushed for First Source – which requires employers receiving city funding of any kind to use a list of unemployed Providence residents in hiring for open non-supervisory positions — since the Black and Hispanic Contractors Association discovered in spring 2003 that it had never been enforced. Mersha remains unsure why it took more than two years for the Cicilline administration to fund the initiative.

As part of an escalating series of actions, DARE, Rhode Island Jobs With Justice, and several Providence residents threatened during the July 15 protest to file a lawsuit against Cicilline and Thomas E. Deller, director of planning and development, if they continued to delay the implementation of First Source.

Since allocating money for the effort, the city has dubbed the program Providence Connects and established a Web site (www.providenceconnects.org) to link prospective employers and employees. "It’s going to be really successful," Cicilline said in a recent interview. "I’m proud of the fact that we’re implementing it."

Still, the effectiveness of the program in linking job seekers with work remains to be seen. The less-than-settled state of conflict between activists and City Hall can be seen in how Cicilline says people have already been referred through First Source to jobs at the GTECH call center, although Mersha says the referrals were not made as part of First Source.