Hennepin County attorney’s office supports administrative subpoena power for wage‑theft investigations

Alex Halverson, senior attorney and head of the Worker Protection Unit in the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, told the Public Safety and Judiciary Conference Committee on May 8 that adding wage theft to the list of offenses subject to administrative subpoena authority would improve investigations and conserve law‑enforcement resources.

Halverson said the office already has administrative subpoena authority for certain classes of financial and fraud offenses and that expanding that authority would let county attorneys obtain routine third‑party records — payroll, bank and phone records — directly from institutions. “The administrative piece of it allows us to get what are typically noncontroversial documents from third‑party sources, like banks,” Halverson said, adding that doing so can free law enforcement to focus on violent crime and other pressing matters.

He described the usual process: referrals arrive from law enforcement agencies such as the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which will have started an investigation; the county attorney’s office then performs additional workups and can pursue broader financial‑crime expertise. Halverson said wage‑theft cases frequently involve record collection and iterative coordination with law enforcement and that administrative subpoenas would streamline that work.

Committee members asked about scope and safeguards. Nonpartisan proceedings noted the statutory reference at issue (section cited in the hearing as 388.23). Halverson said the bill’s language aims to reach employers and “other persons or business entities” who are the subject of a wage‑theft investigation, so the office can obtain records even when an employer has misclassified workers as independent contractors or uses third‑party bookkeepers or payroll vendors.

Nancy Haas, representing the Minnesota County Attorneys Association, told the committee the association’s criminal law committee reviewed the proposal and the association supports the language; Haas said several other states have granted similar local powers.

Committee members discussed the “other person” phrase, noting it could expand scope to third parties and prompting questions about limits. Halverson said existing statutory safeguards (he referenced subdivision c in the statute as written) already limit the kinds of private records that can be compelled and that prosecutions still require appropriate probable cause and, where necessary, judicial process.

No committee vote on the amendment was recorded at this hearing. Halverson and others said the change would be used iteratively with law enforcement and that the administrative tool would not replace warrants in appropriate cases.

Ending: The committee heard supportive testimony from county‑attorney representatives and did not take immediate floor action on the draft amendment.