TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa City Council voted unanimously Thursday to move forward with a plan to reward businesses contracting with the city when they hire individuals who have been involved in the criminal justice system.

The proposal calls for contractors to “ban the box,” meaning to eliminate questions on an initial job application asking whether an applicant has a criminal history. The city already uses such a policy for their own hires, but the new ordinance seeks to motivate private businesses who want to contract with Tampa to do the same.

This isn’t the first time the city council has voted on the expansion of a “ban the box” ordinance to include contractors. While they passed their own "ban the box" measure for city employees in 2013, they rejected a proposal to expand the move to contractors in 2015.

More than 650,000 people are released from prison every year, and studies show that approximately two-thirds will probably be re-arrested within three years of release, according to the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

“That’s a problem that implicates all of our communities no matter where you live, right?” said Tampa City Council member Luis Viera, who is sponsoring the current ordinance.

The movement to require that local governments not ask job applicants about having a criminal history began emerging in early 2010s, and there are more than 150 cities and counties that have adopted “ban the box” ordinances since then, according to the National Employment Law Project.

The only member of the public to appear Thursday to speak about the proposed ordinance was Craig Powell, an executive coordinator with PowerNet of Tampa. Powell was part of an ex-offender reentry task force in Montgomery County, Ohio, in the 2000s that got the Dayton City Council to pass their own ‘ban the box’ ordinance in 2012.

“We’ve got to not only do these types of innovative programs like ‘ban the box, but we’ve also gotta raise public awareness, because we can’t continue discriminating against good people who made bad decisions usually early in life,” Powell told Spectrum Bay News 9. “The average age in prison is in the 20s, but boy, you can suffer for decades and decades after your release into your 40s and 50s.”

To receive points when bidding for a city contract, contractors must currently have ex-offenders in their workforce, have employed ex-offenders in the past, or attempted to hire ex-offenders. A city staffer said that companies would need to show that they are complying, and if they can’t show that, the ordinance would provide “extra encouragement” for them to hire ex-offenders.

Viera said that he hopes to include funding in the upcoming budget for a new joint apprentice training program with Hillsborough County to offer skills training to ex-offenders.

“These are people who want to work hard and get the basic skills that they need to provide food for their families,” he said.

The ordinance passed on first reading Thursday and the City Council will hold a second reading of the proposed ordinance on Aug. 4.