Hi! I recently accepted a contingent offer at a federal agency (FEMA) for a great mid-level position that I’m really excited about and was told I needed to obtain Public Trust Clearance prior to employment. I’ve submitted the SF85P and my fingerprints a little over a week ago now. I’ve been reading online about Public Trust and other posts here, and it’s been making my anxiety act up (probably from reading too much about it online). I am specifically worried about some red flags (I disclosed everything on the form), which I’ll note below:
- Misdemeanor from mid-2017: A heavily abridged version is that I ran from a cab and skipped on the fare. The cab had my address, but because it was a quadplex, the ticket was never received by me (I had thought I got away with it or the cab never filed a police report). I was pulled over a little over a year later and arrested as the ticket went truant, by which point I had completely forgotten about it. I was booked, and paid the ticket immediately along with the restitution. This was the one and only time I’ve had a run in with the law.
- Financial History: Due to a bunch of natural disasters where I lived, I was able to basically collect two paychecks while working one job. One job laid us off while for a period of time but still paid us out an average of our paychecks. I picked up a second job, and when taxes rolled around I owed money. I was young and did not expect this, I wasn’t able to pay it for about 2-3 years due to covid and going back to school. The balance has been paid in full since 2020 or 2021.
- Financial History: Credit Card debt, my debt to income ratio is high at the moment but I’ve never missed a payment or defaulted on a credit card. I’ve been working to pay it off slowly after a cross-country move for work, but not as quickly as I’d like. I also had a random account from my wifi service go into collections as I forgot to send their router back, I paid it in full as soon as I got the notification.
I read that the circumstances of these risk factors are taken into consideration for the final decision, and I hope that the latter years of my life show that the misdemeanor was a one off event and that I’ve been working to (slowly) improve my financials. I went back to college at a top public university and graduated at the top of my class and I’ve only ever had a stint of unemployment during the height of the pandemic. No substance use or abuse in the last 7 years and I hardly ever drink now (I did prior to going back to school). The lack of a time frame is what’s killing me the most, as I think the position would be phenomenal for me career-wise and offer me that bit of stability I’ve been chasing since deciding to go back to school. With these risk and mitigation factors, though, I’m worried I’ll be in limbo for quite sometime. Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated!