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Committee advances cleanup bill to align state background-check language with FBI requirements
Summary
The House Business, Labor & Employment Committee on Thursday advanced SB 146, a technical cleanup bill that revises state statutes so fingerprint-based criminal-history record checks can be forwarded to the FBI through the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, enabling participation in interstate licensing compacts.
The Business, Labor & Employment Committee voted to advance Senate Bill 146, a broadly scoped cleanup bill that revises multiple statutes so fingerprint-based criminal-history record checks can be processed through the FBI via the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Sponsors said the draft preserves existing licensing requirements but rewords statutes to meet stringent FBI criteria that govern when a state may submit fingerprints for federal checks. Joel Malekar, legislative liaison for the Department of Public Safety, told the committee that the FBI must approve the statute language before the state can forward prints for a national check; if the language fails the FBI’s review, the state can only perform Colorado-only checks.
Representatives of the CBI and the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) testified the bill is necessary to implement previously enacted compacts and licensing laws that depend on a federal-level fingerprint check. DORA said the bill does not add new background-check requirements; rather, it ensures that statutes already authorizing checks conform to FBI guidance so the checks can be transmitted to the FBI.
The strike-below amendment described by sponsors shifts some massage business background-check elements to local ordinances and delays a compliance date for that particular item to July 1, 2026, to give local governments more time to adopt conforming ordinances. Witnesses from CBI and DORA said they worked with FBI guidance to craft language that satisfies the federal criteria.
Witnesses from HopSkipDrive and other specialized providers asked for carve-outs for school-based transportation providers, and the committee adopted a pair of technical amendments during the hearing. After debate and several staff explanations about vendor requirements and audit practices for third-party live-scan fingerprint vendors, the committee moved SB 146 to the Committee of the Whole with a favorable recommendation.
