Public Hearing Testimony of Danté Bartolomeo
Commissioner
Department of Labor
Appropriations Committee
April 3, 2025
Good morning, Senator Osten, Representative Walker, Senator Somers Representative Nuccio, Subcommittee Co-Chairs Senator Hartley and Representative Kavros DeGraw, and members of the Appropriations Committee. My name is Danté Bartolomeo, and I am the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Labor (CTDOL).
I am pleased to submit written public hearing testimony today in support of Section 11 of HB 6865: An Act Implementing the Governor’s Recommendations for General Government. Section 11 repeals the expanded wage reporting provisions which allow employers subject to the state’s unemployment law to report certain data about each employee in their quarterly wage reports to the Labor Department, due to implementation difficulties.
Connecticut’s employers expressed concerns about the ability to implement what they viewed as onerous reporting requirements. All employers, large and small, along with Third Party Administrators (TPAs) would need to invest in additional software or changes to their systems to provide the additional data to CTDOL. Additionally, there would have been a substantial fiscal impact on CTDOL to implement this change to meet the summer 2026 deliverable as well as on-going CTDOL staffing costs to administer these enhanced wage reporting provisions.
By law, employers subject to the state’s unemployment law must submit quarterly wage reports to CTDOL with information about each employee receiving wages, including name, Social Security number, and the amount of wages paid during the calendar quarter. Beginning with the third quarter of 2026, Public Act 23-4 and Public Act 24-147 changed the wage reporting provisions to include in their quarterly wage reports data for each employee on (1) occupation and hours worked and (2) zip code for the employee’s primary worksite.
HB 6865: An Act Implementing the Governor’s Recommendations for General Government (Section 11) contains repeal of these expanded wage reporting provisions.
I respectfully urge your support of HB 6865 and the repeal of these provisions. Thank you for the opportunity to submit this written testimony to you today in support of Section 11. My staff and I are reachable to further discuss HB 6865 by directing any questions you may have to Marisa Morello, Legislative and Communications Program Manager, at marisa.morello@ct.gov.
