Governor Schwarzenegger Signs Bill for EMT Background Checks

California created a statewide standard of background checking EMTs as well as established a paramedic registry. Governor Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law on Thursday.

The bill, AB 2917, had wide support; it passed the state Senate 35-1.

Through the new law, California will be able to develop standards for certification of EMTs. It will also be able to keep track of disciplinary orders and conditions of probations. Presently, in California, there is no repository of this information allowing EMTs who have a history of misconduct to travel from county to county without being caught or prevented from obtaining jobs.

State Assembly Majority Leader, Alberto Torrico, created the bill. He noted that while EMTs are "unsung heroes" in emergency situations, "it was important to push these reforms to prevent others from falling through the cracks."

The bill had the support of California's Health & Human Services, the State Firefighters Association, and the Emergency Medical Services Administrators Association of California.

Kudos to California for taking this step!

California Attempts to Ban Credit Reports for Employment Screening

The California State Senate is currently working on bill AB 2918, which will extremely limit the use of credit reports for pre-employment screening purposes. If passed, credit reports will only be allowed for positions which receive high compensation or for law enforcement positions in which employees will be working with or handling money.

This bill, if passed, will eliminate the ability of employers to check their employees' credit when hiring for positions that deal with the handling of money. This would include employees who would have access to cash, merchandise and clients' personal information, such as credit card numbers.

As it is not legal to use a FICO score to determine employment, pre-employment credit reports do not record that information. Rather, they give an employer the ability to see how a potential employee handles their finances, painting a picture of their responsibility and character. In addition, a pre-employment credit report does not deduct points from a person's credit score.

So why is California trying to ban this access?

Assemblywoman, Sally Lieber (D), introduced this bill on 02/22/2008. It went through its second reading in the Senate on 08/19/2008. Lieber's supporting argument was as follows:

"In the past, only banks and financial services companies routinely ran credit checks on potential employees. But employers in other sectors increasingly are including them in the screening process in an attempt to assess applicants' personality traits such as honesty and integrity. United States employers' use of credit checks increased fifty-five percent over the past five years, according to one recent study. This trend makes it harder for people who are laid off, newly divorced, or saddled with student loans to find full-time jobs. The employers' view may be that these people are irresponsible deadbeats, but there can be many contributing reasons such as identity theft or large medical bills. Credit reports were not designed as predictors of employability, and people who have thin credit files - students, young workers, the poor, the elderly - tend to be at a disadvantage because their reports do not predict how they will behave in the future."

The California Association of Licensed Private Investigators spoke in opposition of the bill:

"AB 2918 would prohibit the use of information which is pertinent to evaluating the trustworthiness, integrity, and responsibility of the individual. This is critical in situations where the person is being considered for a position where funds, personal information, and/or confidential business information will be involved. It is important to note that the information contained in a report issued to an employer by a credit bureau is different than the information contained in a consumer credit report that is used for an evaluation of the individual's creditworthiness. The report issued to employers does not contain FICO credit scores or account numbers. Some examples of situations where consumer credit report information is important are: retail and food establishments where the employees will be handling money, property management companies where the employees will be sent into residences, sometimes when the tenants are not home, as well as housecleaning services, hotels, motels, arid others, and parking lot attendants, who collect large sums of money with no supervision."

We spoke with Christopher Ballas, CEO of Backgrounds Online, who stated, "Any position within a company has the capacity to be a potential liability, from CEO to an entry level job. Why not allow employers, who in the end will bear the burden of the actions of their employees, to make sound and informed decisions? A pre-employment credit report is a valuable piece of information to employers that are looking to place the best candidate in the appropriate position."

Status, voting and the bill's history can be viewed here.