For the second time in a month, the legislature has tucked an amendment into a bill that seemingly had no relationship to the original bill and that will have a significant impact on employers in the Connecticut.

Latest case in point: Senate Bill 80 (S.B. 80) which is titled "AN ACT CONCERNING ELECTRONIC UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION PAYMENTS."  For a long while, that bill has just required all employers with at least 100 employees, rather than at least 250 (the current standard), who pay unemployment compensation taxes or make payments in lieu of such taxes to make the payments electronically.

As you might imagine, that bill seems fairly mundane and passed the Senate last week.

Yesterday, the House took up the bill and added an amendment which incorporates the provisions of House Bill 5521 (H.B. 5521), which I discussed previously here.  The amendment (as did the original house bill) prohibits the use of credit reports for employment decisions unless one of several exceptions applies. 

The OLR report and summary on the bill as amended is available here. 

Because the Senate had already approved of S.B. 80 in its original form, the House’s passage of the same bill with a new amendment sends the bill back to the Senate for consideration. I will provide a further update on the final approval of this measure after the Senate has considered it.