Vote Recommendation | Economic Freedom | Property Rights | Personal Responsibility | Limited Government | Individual Liberty |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
No | Negative | Neutral | Neutral | Negative | Neutral |
HB 94 would create an online database or list of employers convicted of wage theft. Business entities included in the database must be notified no later than 180 days before they are listed in the database. An employer would have the right to dispute inclusion in the database The process must require the commission to investigate and make a final determination regarding an employer dispute not later than the 21st day after the date the dispute is filed. The commission would be required to list an employer in the database until the third anniversary of the date the penalty is assessed or the employer is convicted.
For purposes of this legislation, a person has been
convicted of an offense if the person was adjudged guilty of the
offense or entered a plea of guilty or nolo contendere in return for
a grant of deferred adjudication, regardless of whether the
sentence for the offense was ever imposed or whether the sentence was probated and the person was subsequently discharged from
community supervision.
HB 94 would amount to social stigmatization of employers convicted of wage theft. Wage theft is certainly no light matter and it is already a crime with an associated penalty. There is no reason for the state to maintain the registry proposed in this legislation. The private sector has mechanisms in place such as losing organizational accreditation and crowd-sourced review sites that can accomplish the desired goals of the proposed database more directly and effectively than a state run system. We are opposed to this legislation as an infringement on limited government and free markets.