I continue to urge you to vote NO on SB127. Since the bill was last deferred, the sponsor has not satisfactorilly answered questions about its scope.
The bill, as it is currently written, seems to affect two types of policies--internal HR and benefit policies and policies about external service or service to customers.
If the bill affects external service policies, it ties the hands of state and local government in awarding contracts and grants. Often government needs to serve segments of the public and if it can't use the policies of the business or nonprofit as a grant or contract criterion, that's a bad use of taxpayer funds. At best, the grant or contract misses the mark in the government's service goal and at worst it leads to taxpayer funded discrimination.
But even if the bill is amended to take out the broad language that includes external service policies, it is still a bad bill. So I'm asking you to vote NO.
Limiting the bill to a business or nonprofit's internal HR and benefit policies still ties the hands of government. If a company provides bus driving or janitorial services and it doesn't provide background checks (which is an HR policy!), then how is a public school district supposed to treat them when they bid for a contract? This puts minors in danger. Local governments, public school districts, the state government, and our public universities have to be able to look at these kinds of business and nonprofit internal policies when awarding grants and contracts.
A broad ban on their ability to use these policies as a criterion will lead to unintended consequences that the Senate may not have had time to examine.
Thank you for considering my views.
