Fresh out of prison in 2023, James returned to Denton on parole and in need of a job to pay his fines to the court on top of his rent and other bills just to stay out of prison.
He got in trouble for drugs the first time when he was in high school, and that charge haunted him after he graduated in 2019. He struggled to find good-paying jobs and decided to start selling marijuana again as a way to supplement his income after his child was born, to pay bills and put food on the table.
Not long passed before James, who asked that full his name not be used, got caught again. He received a felony charge for selling marijuana vape pens and wax — items that are legal in 24 states, but not Texas.
“If you have a record, they can see it on the application, and you are the last pick of everyone else to get the job,” James said in an interview this week. “A felon can be the president, but we can’t do the job that we applied for?”
It was people with criminal records like James — about 9 million in Texas, according to the Texas Center for Justice and Equity — whom the Denton Chamber of Commerce was aiming to help earlier this year when it first pitched the idea of a fair-chance hiring program, in lieu of Denton City Council member Brandon Chase McGee’s proposed fair-chance hiring ordinance.
That ordinance would have requested that private businesses in the city remove any criminal background questions from their job applications and wait until later in the hiring process to seek such information.
However, the Chamber of Commerce has informed the city that it still hasn’t been able to begin the pilot program. The program was supposed to start in July, but the chamber requested another extension from the council for January 2025.
“In August 2024, the Chamber and the City initiated the transition of the Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) from the Chamber to the City. This transition has temporarily impacted the resources available for the FCH Program. During this period, the Chamber has not received any inquiries from businesses regarding the program,” the chamber said in a statement that city staff shared with the council in a presentation Tuesday.
And while some council support was shown for extending the deadline, McGee and the majority chose to reconsider McGee’s fair-chance hiring ordinance.
On Tuesday, McGee said he would be pitching the reconsideration at the Dec. 17 council meeting and called the chamber’s actions a “carrot on the stick” scenario, similar to what he claimed in May, when chamber President Erin Carter didn’t create a fair-chance hiring program after being given 120 days by the council to do so.
“To be clear, they don’t want this,” McGee told council members. “... They thought that they could wait and delay and wait for [my] recall.”
A petition to recall McGee was submitted to the city secretary’s office this week.
Council member Vicki Byrd said she was disappointed in the chamber, while council member Jill Jester disagreed with McGee.
“Having dealt with the chamber staff and board, I do not believe that they are involved in any game-playing and want what is best,” Jester said. “I do not speculate anything else unless proven otherwise.”
In a Tuesday evening email to the Denton Record-Chronicle, Carter wrote that the chamber would continue to assess its involvement with the proposed pilot program based on the needs of the business community and its members.
“The Chamber respectfully disagrees with Councilmember McGee’s assertion, as it is inaccurate and unsupported,” Carter wrote. “As was stated in the presentation, we have not observed significant interest from our business community.”
As of 2022, there were 19,177 businesses in Denton, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. It’s unclear how many of those businesses were contacted to participate in the chamber’s pilot program.
Carter was out of the office Wednesday and couldn’t be reached for follow-up questions.
In June, the chamber presented the pilot program idea to the council. Council members had voted not to approve McGee’s ordinance and instead decided to allow the chamber to move forward with implementing the new program.
Council member Brian Beck reiterated Tuesday that he didn’t understand why they couldn’t do both: pass a fair-chance hiring ordinance and have a fair-chance hiring program for local businesses to participate in.
“They are not alternatives,” Beck said.
The program was planned to include quarterly workshops for local businesses about recouping wages through tax credits such as the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, a federal credit to employers who hire individuals from certain targeted groups who face barriers to employment.
The chamber program would also include discussions about fidelity bonding, a free six-month service that basically acts like an insurance policy for an employer who hires certain job applicants, offered by the Texas Workforce Commission.
Businesses participating in the workshops would receive marketing opportunities to promote that they are a “Second Chance Hiring Friendly” on the chamber’s website.
In June, McGee indicated that more than 125 cities in the U.S. and half the states support the “ban the box” initiative, also known as fair-chance hiring.
“This is something affecting Black and brown men specifically,” McGee told council members in June.
James, who is white, said the only reason he was able to find a good-paying job is because a friend who works as an electrician decided to give him a chance as an apprentice despite his criminal background.
Now he’s working full-time and earning about $150 a day.
“You have to know somebody to get a good job somewhere,” James said. “If felons could get jobs, there would be a lot less crime and a lot less drug dealing.”