Unemployment and immigration, two national hot-button topics, have also become points of contention in local races in Simi Valley.

So much so, in fact, that on Monday the sitting council will revisit the possible use of E-Verify, an online tool that can be used by businesses and local government to determine the legal status of a job applicant.

Employers enter a new hire’s name, birthdate and Social Security number into the free, Internetbased system, which cross-checks the information with the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records to seek a match.

The council first looked into E-Verify in January. According to City Manager Mike Sedell, it wasn’t on the agenda; it was brought up during council comments. The council at that time asked staff to research the system and submit a report to their personal boxes, which staff did this June.

The system became a campaign issue in July when mayoral candidate Bob Huber called for the adoption of E-Verify by the city to protect local jobs for law-abiding citizens who are authorized to work in the United States.

In a letter to the editor published in the Simi Valley Acorn, Huber—a local attorney—asked why the city hadn’t taken this “simple step,” adding that if he were elected mayor, he would introduce an ordinance requiring every company that does business with the city and every business that applies for a business permit to use E-Verify.

And he would have city employees screened, too.

Mayor Paul Miller responded with a letter of his own, stating that when city staff researched the pro- gram, it found that the results of independent studies of the system left questions as to E-Verify’s reliability.

Miller said the system appears to be “highly unreliable,” with an error rate that is “no better than a flip of the coin.”

The mayor went on to say that while E-Verify may hold promise, he wouldn’t feel comfortable directing taxpayer resources or imposing a regulation on employers to use such a system until its flaws were corrected.

Yet a week later, on Aug. 6, the city manager’s office issued a statement in which Miller asked that city staff bring back to the City Council a “comprehensive plan”—one that includes EVerify— for the council to consider implementing to make sure that city workers and contractors are legally permitted to work in the U.S.

The mayor said that the council supports doing whatever it can to eliminate the hiring of people who are not authorized to work in the U.S.

Sedell said the decision to bring the issue back to the council, perhaps sooner than it would have, is not a change in position on the mayor’s part, but rather an attempt to squash the notion that the council hasn’t been considering or supportive of using E-Verify.

He said E-Verify is a new system and improvements are continuing to be made to the program. The city just wants “to make sure it is the best program this council can adopt” and see what alternatives are available beyond E-Verify.

Huber feels the reason the council is taking up the issue now is because Miller misstated the facts.

“It’s 96 percent accurate. The facts speak for themselves,” he said.

“This is an issue in this town that people feel strongly about, I mean really strongly about,” Huber added. “All I want to do is continue to follow through with this. I be- lieve it should be adopted by the city, I believe it is good for the city, I believe it will help the thousands of people who are out of work in the city.”

At Monday’s meeting, Miller will ask for the council’s support to work with the Chamber of Commerce to verify that Simi Valley businesses are taking action to ensure that local jobs are kept available to those legally authorized to work.

The meeting is at 6:30 p.m. Monday in the council chambers at city hall, 2929 Tapo Canyon Road.

“I’ll be there,” Huber said. “I plan on speaking.”