Committee approves removing fax requirement from child-maltreatment reporting (House Bill 1799)

The House Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative & Military Affairs Committee voted to advance House Bill 1799 as amended to remove a requirement that mandated reporters use a fax machine under the Child Maltreatment Act.

Dean Vaught (District 87), who presented the bill and its amendment adding a senate cosponsor, said, "House bill 17 99, all we're doing is taking away the fax machine from the, from the mandated reporting, child mandating child maltreatment act. We no longer have fax machines over there now that we have an online system. So this is just getting rid of that fax." He described the amendment as technical, saying, "The amendment is just adding the senate, cosponsor. It just accidentally got left off. With that, I'd appreciate to get back."

There were no public witnesses for or against the bill in the transcript. The committee adopted the amendment and then approved the bill on a do-pass motion as amended; the committee recorded the vote by voice only in the transcript and did not provide a roll-call tally.

The change removes a specific delivery method (fax) from statutory language because presenters said the receiving agency now uses an online system. The transcript does not specify the agency that operates the online reporting system, the statutory citation for the Child Maltreatment Act, or an implementation timeline for the amended language.