While the Texas Legislature prepares to wade into the debate over the best way to deal with payroll fraud, some leaders at the local level say they're not waiting for Austin to take action.
Doug Miller, a city councilman in the Fort Worth suburb of Keller says he's going to be in Austin quite a lot during this legislative session a bit to ask that lawmakers “do the right thing.”
Miller, who is also a vice president of a construction company in Fort Worth, wrote on his blog “I have expressed my support for a bill that will deal with this situation with my state representatives. I have also looked into having an ordinance in place in Keller that requires contractors that work for the city not have illegitimate contractors, and in the coming year, if this legislation doesn’t pass, I will push something through on the local level.”
Miller said his plaster, masonry, and stucco firm, Bobby Lee and Company, has been underbid by cheaters by as much as 35 percent.
In an interview with Construction Citizen, Miller said his main concern about the legislature is that “they won't do enough”. He said the Texas Workforce Commission, which has endorsed legislation, needs to go back to the way it used to operate: audit companies for misclassification and penalize them by levying fines. Twenty years ago, Miller's company was fined for misclassifcation. “That stopped that for us. We learned our lesson,” Miller said. Read more » about Some Won't Wait for Texas to Take Action on Payroll Fraud
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