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Minutes for HB2343 - Committee on Children and Seniors
Short Title
Removing provisional employment from adult care homes, home health agencies and providers of disability services.
Minutes Content for Thu, Feb 21, 2019
Kyle Hamilton gave an overview of HB2343. (Attachment 1)
Mitzi McFatrich spoke in support of the bill explaining that the bill will prevent people who have a history of abuse of elderly from being able to work in an agency during a provisional time. This bill will verify a clean background check before anyone has unsupervised access to a vulnerable adult. (Attachment 2)
Ernest Kutzley gave written testimony in support of the bill stating that there is no national registry of people who abuse vulnerable adults. They can move around, cross state lines and find work in new locations and not be easily identified. The finger print background check is a good plan but AARP does not support the 60-day provisional employment while waiting for the background check to be completed. This leaves too many people at risk. (Attachment 3).
Rachel Monger spoke in opposition of the bill stating that only 0.4% of applicants turn out to have a criminal background. The risk during provisional employment is quite low. Provisional hiring is the only safety net to cover when there is a backlog and background checks cannot be done in a timely manner. (Attachment 4).
Linda MowBray spoke in opposition of the bill stating that there has been five years of research and development on this topic that created the existing law. There is a registry that lists known local offenders and it is checked before an interview. Folks on that list do not even make it to a hiring interview. The background check comes into place after hiring. Right now checks are done in a timely manner and the turnaround is about a week. After the new fingerprint based checks begin, we do not know how long it will take. We might need the maximum limits set into this law to cover delays created by the start-up of the new process. We need to be able to keep workers. It is hard to find people who are willing to do this type of work and to take this wage. If there is a delay of days or a week or longer, these people will not wait. They will move on to another job that does not have a hiring delay. We need provisional hiring to cover the gap between hiring and the finalization of the background check. Let us give the existing plan a trial before we toss it out. (Attachment 5).
Hearing was closed at 2:35.
