Abbott backs bill to prevent local governments from regulating sick leave, other benefits

It should be up to Texas employers — and not local politicians — to decide what benefits they offer their workers, Gov. Greg Abbott said Tuesday in a speech to an association of small business owners.

Having a city or county government create local regulations for employee benefits creates “a patchwork quilt of regulations” that drive up the cost of doing business, Abbott told members of the National Federation of Independent Business.

The governor said he will back the Consistent Employment Regulations Act — a measure filed Tuesday by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, and Rep. Craig Goldman, R-Fort Worth — that would ban local governments from regulating employee benefits.

“Paid sick leave, for a lot of businesses, is a great strategy,” Abbott said in his speech for NFIB-Texas’ Small Business Day. “It can be a recruiting tool that some businesses use to attract employees to go work for them, but it should be exactly that. It should be an option chosen by the business based upon their strategy of what they want to do, as opposed to a government mandate.”

Read more: https://www.statesman.com/news/20190212/abbott-backs-bill-to-prevent-local-governments-from-regulating-sick-leave-other-benefits