Almost $7 million in funding was approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Tuesday for a year-long campaign to reach 500,000 people who are eligible to have felonies on their records reduced to misdemeanors under Proposition 47.
The money will come out of the county’s annual budget and will help pay for mailers, town hall meetings, and information on the county’s 2-1-1 information line, county officials told supervisors. The goal is to reach 500,000 people involved in some 819,000 cases across Los Angeles County who may be eligible for outreach, services and help in seeking employment, county officials said. Some outreach has already started and will continue until October 2017.
“Although Prop. 47 was passed by voters in November 2014, the level of awareness in the community and among eligible clients is unknown,” according to a report prepared by Los Angeles County’s Chief Executive Office. “A large proportion of cases are old and eligible clients have since moved on living with a felony record.”
Known as the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act and passed by voters in 2014, Prop. 47 allows some low-level, nonviolent felonies such as simple drug possession, petty theft under $950 and forging or writing a bad check under $950, changed to misdemeanors on old criminal records.
More than 70 percent of those who are eligible live in areas overseen by supervisors Hilda Solis, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Don Knabe, whose districts together stretch from Downtown L.A. to Carson, Rowland Heights to Torrance.
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