PROVIDENCE – Two resolutions set for Monday votes at the U.S. Conference of Mayors would urge the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama to support federal programs creating “green jobs” for those re-entering the work force from prison and developing “green” affordable housing.
Resolution No. 36, submitted by Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline and seven other mayors, including Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Richard M. Daley of Chicago, calls for $125 million in Green Jobs Act grants and $301 million in Second Chance Act grants.
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The funding would create green jobs for ex-convicts and green job training for low-income residents. The resolution notes that 67.5 percent of released convicts are arrested again within three years, but “programs like the Department of Labor’s Prisoner Reentry Initiative have shown promising results [with] only 14 percent of those participating in the initiative are re-arrested.”
The second piece of the initiatve, Resolution No. 20, would call for federal funding and support for local government to “implement and expand green building production.” Cicilline and six other mayors – including San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino – submitted the resolution.
If the resolutions are approved by a USCM vote on Monday, they will become the official opinion of the 1,200 USCM members. They will then become part of a policy agenda that is forwarded on to Obama and Congress.
In addition to the resolution introductions, the “greening” of cities is a topic being discussed in two USCM sessions today. The first, a workshop called “Green Today, Jobs Tomorrow,” was set to start at 10 a.m. with remarks from Cicilline and mayors from Stamford, Conn., Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Long Beach, Calif. The second is the Best Practices Awards, starting at 2:30 p.m., which will give grants to mayoral-and-nonprofit partnerships to create green work force training.
Both of today’s green events will be held at the R.I. Convention Center.
Members of Obama’s administration, including Vice President Joseph Biden and U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., announced early this week that they would not attend the annual conference, which kicked off today in Providence, because the city’s firefighters are picketing the event.
Cicilline has been in a long-running contract dispute with the union, Local 799 of the International Association of Fire Fighters.
