House Judiciary panel adopts working document for HB97, adds criminal wage-theft provisions

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday adopted a committee substitute for House Bill 97 as its working document, advancing a proposal that would add criminal penalties for wage theft, create an organized-theft offense and revise theft thresholds while leaving several technical questions for state lawyers and labor officials.

Representative Gray, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, opened the discussion and framed the bill’s new wage-theft provisions as a response to a widespread problem: "Wage theft is a serious crime, and it's time that our laws reflect that reality," Gray said, citing a national estimate that wage theft costs employees as much as $50,000,000,000 annually.

Committee staff walked lawmakers through the substitute. Nate Graham, staff to Representative Gray, told the committee the substitute: borrows organized-theft language from the governor’s House Bill 106; incorporates an exemption to mail-theft rules for certain corrections and juvenile facility employees drawn from Representative Colombe’s House Bill 77; removes some changed thresholds for degrees of theft in earlier drafts; and adds sections that (1) create wage-theft offenses in the first, second and third degrees, (2) define "aggregate value," (3) authorize restitution for wage theft, (4) add organized-theft as an aggravating factor and (5) set applicability and an effective date.

The substitute also changes how theft thresholds are expressed. Graham said the bill removes the previously changed lower thresholds for varying degrees of theft and that Section 10 defines aggregate value, a term the committee asked Department of Law to compare with an existing aggregate-value statute.

Deputy Attorney General John Skidmore, participating online for the Department of Law, told the committee the substitute’s exemption in Section 6 currently covers employees of "a correctional facility, juvenile detention facility, or a juvenile treatment facility," and that the draft does not address adult-care staff such as those in mental-health or substance-abuse treatment settings. "There does need to be some sort of exemption for DOC," Skidmore said, and he told the committee he would "have to go and look at that in another area" and follow up.

Lawmakers pressed staff on enforcement and interagency roles. Representative Mina asked whether the Department of Labor or other agencies would be involved; Graham said the Department of Law and the Department of Labor could work together and that individuals could also bring matters to police or the Department of Law. Evan Anderson, staff to Representative Fields, told the committee the Wage and Hour unit at the Department of Labor is "heavily under resourced" and said adding wage theft to the criminal code would provide an additional enforcement option for regulators and victims.

On penalties and repeat-offender treatment, Graham told the committee that if the first offense involved less than $1,000, it would be classified as a class A misdemeanor; the bill also includes an escalation provision that moves to a class C felony if a person has been convicted and sentenced on three or more separate occasions of this crime in Alaska or another jurisdiction with similar legislation within the prior 10 years.

Committee members asked for additional legal and technical analysis before final language is adopted. Representative Underwood and others requested Department of Law review of how the substitute’s new "aggregate value" definition interacts with an existing statute that also addresses aggregate values; Skidmore said he had not yet "sorted out in my head how those two things play together" and agreed to provide follow-up. The committee has also invited the Department of Law and Department of Labor to provide invited testimony at the committee’s next meeting.

Procedurally, a member moved that the committee substitute for House Bill 97 be adopted as the House Judiciary Committee’s working document; Representative Mina initially objected for the purpose of discussion but later removed her objection. With no further objections, the chair announced the substitute had been adopted as the committee’s working document and the bill was set aside to be reopened next week for invited and public testimony. The committee did not record a roll-call vote in the transcript.

The committee’s discussion combined legislative drafting details, policy rationales from the chair about protecting vulnerable and seasonal workers, staff explanations of enforcement pathways and requests for more detailed legal review. Law and labor department follow-up was requested on (1) whether adult-care or Department of Corrections employees need an exemption to the mail-theft provision and (2) how the substitute’s aggregate-value definition meshes with existing law.

The committee previewed its next meeting, which will include an initial hearing on House Bill 137 (PFD child support) by Representative Kerrick.