House Appropriations Committee advances bill to increase Child Labor Act fines over GOP objections

The House Appropriations Committee voted to re‑report House Bill 118 to the floor during its meeting, advancing legislation that would increase fines for violating the Child Labor Act.

The committee’s executive director summarized the bill before debate. The executive director said, “We have House Bill 118, which increases the fines for violating the child labor act.”

Representative Young moved to call up House Bill 118; Representative Kinkade seconded the motion. During discussion, a Republican representative (unnamed in the transcript) said, “All Republicans are gonna be voting no. While we wanna be protective of our our young adult workforce, we feel that this will place undue regulations on small businesses at a time when small businesses are already struggling. And then we feel that that will in turn have some physical impact on the Commonwealth if small businesses are forced to not be able to hire or forced to go out of business because of these fines in our opinion are excessive.”

A roll call indicated that Democratic members signaled they would vote in the affirmative and Republican members signaled they would vote no. After the roll call, the committee chair announced, “Seeing that ayes have it, House Bill 118 will be re reported to the floor.”

The transcript did not specify the exact dollar amounts or fine schedules contained in HB118. The executive director’s overview identified only that the bill increases fines; further details and any statutory citations were not specified in the meeting record.

The action advances the bill to the full House for further consideration; no additional committee instructions or amendments were recorded in the transcript.