By Laura Perdew
Legislation proposing to expose employers whose employees use public assistance services is scheduled to be considered by the Senate fiscal committee early next week.
The California Chamber of Commerce and other employer groups are opposing AB 1792 (Gomez; D-Los Angeles), set for hearing August 4 in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
AB 1792 unfairly exposes private sector employers with more than 50 employees who are beneficiaries of Medi-Cal, CalWORKS, or CalFresh to liability, to public protests and media attacks by creating a public list of those employers and the cost to the state of the benefits being provided to their workers.
The bill asks the state Employment Development Department (EDD) and the state Department of Finance (DOF) to develop and publish the list in consultation with the state Department of Health Services and the Department of Social Services.
In its bill analysis, the DOF states, “the benefits of having this data are unclear relative to the potentially significant cost of extracting it.”
Ongoing costs are estimated by the Department of Social Services at $330,000 to $480,000 for additional information technology personnel, in addition to one-time costs of about $165,000 for automation to process and transmit Social Security numbers of aid recipients to EDD.
EDD predicts one-time …read more
Source: Fullerton Chamber of Commerce
