Update from the H-2B Workforce Coalition on H-2B provisions in recent bills.

Senate Appropriations Bills

Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed its version of the Department of Labor Appropriations bill. It includes the following helpful H-2B provisions:

• Authorizes DOL to transfer up to $20M of H-1B fee funding to augment staffing for H-2B and H-2A temporary labor certification processing to avoid processing delays.
• Continues the H-2B regulatory relief provisions that were enacted last year to allow the use of wage surveys, prohibit DOL from enforcing the regulations corresponding employment and ¾ guarantee provisions and limiting DOL audit authority.

The bill also includes the following non-binding report language:

If your landscape company does business in Boulder County, we want to make you aware of an ordinance update that could impact your business. The proposed revised ordinance would require landscape companies to obtain a hauler’s license as well as comply with annual reporting requirements.

The Boulder County Commissioners will soon be reviewing an update to the Boulder County Hauler Ordinance (http://www.bouldercounty.org/env/trash/pages/haulerordinance.aspx). The changes would require any “person or company in the business of collecting, transporting or disposing of Discarded Materials for another, for a fee, or for no fee” to obtain an annual hauler license from the county.