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Bill Summary · HB 162

HB 162 — Local Government Applicants / Criminal History Check (North Carolina, 2025)

Status: Regular Message Sent to Senate (Introduced Feb 21, 2025)
Primary sponsors: Representatives Loftis, N. Jackson, Ward, Kidwell
Subjects: Counties; Criminal records; Education; Employment; Minors; Municipalities; Personnel; Public; Social services; Records

Main purpose

Make criminal-history background checks mandatory (instead of optional) for local government job applicants whose positions require working with children in any capacity.

Key provisions

  • Amends two existing statutes:
    • G.S. 153A‑94.2 (county hiring) and
    • G.S. 160A‑164.2 (city hiring).
  • Current law: county boards of commissioners and city councils “may” adopt rules requiring criminal-history checks for applicants.
  • Change under HB 162:
    • For any position that requires the applicant to work with children in any capacity, the board (county) or council (city) shall require the applicant to submit to a criminal history record check.
    • The checks are to be of State and National Repositories of Criminal Histories and must be conducted by the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) in accordance with G.S. 143B‑1209.26.
    • Local employers may consider the results of the SBI checks in hiring decisions (existing statutory language retained for consideration in hiring).
  • Effective date: October 1, 2025.
  • Applicability: applies to applications for employment submitted on or after October 1, 2025.

Who is affected

  • Counties (boards of commissioners) and cities (councils) — they must require background checks for applicants to positions that involve working with children.
  • Applicants seeking employment with local governments in roles that involve contact with minors (e.g., parks & recreation staff, youth program staff, after‑school program employees, certain social services roles, and other municipal positions involving children).
  • State Bureau of Investigation — will perform the required State/National criminal history checks.
  • Potential indirect effects: local human resources processes, hiring timelines, and costs associated with processing additional background checks.

Potential impacts and considerations

  • Child safety: intended to strengthen protections by ensuring criminal-history screening for positions involving minors.
  • Administrative/fiscal: likely increases the volume of SBI background checks requested by local governments; actual fiscal impact (staff time, SBI processing, local administrative costs) depends on the number of applicable hires and is not specified in the bill text.
  • Hiring process: may lengthen pre-employment screening timelines and could affect hiring decisions where disqualifying records are found.
  • Legal/operational: aligns local government hiring practice with existing SBI procedures (G.S. 143B‑1209.26) and makes permissive authority mandatory for positions involving children.

Legislative procedure / timeline (selected)

  • Referred to: Judiciary 2, then State and Local Government (if favorable), then Rules.
  • Effective and applicable to hires beginning October 1, 2025.

If you’d like, I can:
- Pull the precise statutory text of G.S. 143B‑1209.26 to show what records/process the SBI uses;
- Draft suggested implementation steps for a city or county HR office to comply by Oct 1, 2025.

Compiled from official sources — confirm details with the bill’s official record.

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