Senate advances bill letting consumers freeze credit, requires 15‑minute unfreeze

The Utah Senate advanced a second substitute of Senate Bill 71 on Feb. 3, a measure sponsored by Sen. Walker that would let consumers place a freeze on their credit reports and require credit reporting agencies to remove that freeze within 15 minutes when the consumer provides a PIN or password.

Senator Walker, the bill’s sponsor, told colleagues the bill grew from two years of work with the attorney general’s office, merchants’ groups and credit bureau representatives. “They have agreed that they can have the mechanism in place to do this by February,” Walker said on the floor, adding that the statute’s effective date was set later to give bureaus time to comply. “They can indeed, remove a credit freeze in 15 minutes,” she said.

The substitute creates a process in which a consumer would contact each credit bureau in writing by certified mail to request a freeze. The bill authorizes one reasonable fee to defray bureaus’ implementation costs; Walker said other states charge roughly $15–$20 but the Senate draft uses a single fee model that “may end up being $30 or $40” for a full place/remove cycle. Walker also said victims of identity theft would not be charged the fee.

The substitute includes a number of exceptions and safeguards the credit bureaus requested, Walker said, including carve-outs for law-enforcement access, check-account verification and acts of God or terrorism. The bill also allows temporary removals for specified time windows and provides a PIN/password mechanism for consumers to lift the freeze promptly.

Sen. Hale asked for specifics about the fee, and Walker replied that the bill did not set a precise dollar amount but that comparable fees in other states were about $15–$20; she noted the legislative approach left fee-setting to market pressures and the bill’s one‑fee design. Other senators praised the proposal as a consumer protection tool and called the measure an important step toward preventing identity theft.

On a roll-call recorded in the session, the second substitute of SB 71 received 26 yes, 0 no, with 3 senators absent, and the body advanced the bill to be read for a third time; the transcript does not show final passage during this sitting. Senator Walker said the credit bureaus had agreed to timelines for implementation and that the bill balanced consumer protection with safeguards and limited exceptions for commerce and law enforcement.

The next procedural step recorded in this transcript is the scheduled third reading; there is no final-enactment entry in the transcript provided. If enacted as written, the bill would require operational changes at national credit bureaus and create a new consumer-facing process to place and temporarily lift freezes.

Sources: Floor debate and roll-call recorded Feb. 3, 2006. Direct quotes and procedural tallies are taken from Senate floor remarks and roll-call announced by the presiding officer.