Legislation introduced Feb. 22 would have established a program within the Department of Labor to assist small businesses with job creation. It never received committee consideration.
Under HB398, the department would have had an Alabama Job Creation Ombudsman who would help businesses with fewer than five employees legally complete the process for hiring employees. Businesses that completed the steps provided by the ombudsman would be immune from criminal or civil liability for any hiring deficiencies.
Another bill introduced this session that died would have:
- Required each business in a shopping mall to have at least one functional, operating video camera at all times. HB291 defined shopping mall as “any building that houses or is designed or intended to house five or more sales or rental establishments, or any series of buildings on a common site, connected by a common pedestrian access route above or below the ground floor, that is either under common ownership or common control or developed either as one project or as a series of related projects, that houses or is designed or intended to house five or more sales or rental establishments.” The operating video camera requirement in the legislation also would have applied to state, county and municipal courthouses.
Status of other introductions this session includes:
- Bill seeking to stem the tide of stolen goods on online marketplaces with governor
- Immediate confiscation of unstamped tobacco products on governor’s desk
- Employment law includes defining marketplace platform workers as independent contractors; creating a state minimum wage dies
- Drive-thru/walk-up beer & wine and curbside/takeout alcohol advances to the governor
- Bill proposes rental/leasing businesses hounded for business licenses to come under state delivery license law
- Seasonal worker designation dies in the Senate
- Bills to eliminate sales tax on food, diapers, feminine products among tax bills that died
- Leave for adoptive parents with the governor; pregnancy/breastfeeding accommodations bill returns
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