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2025 · Regular session · House bill
HB4344
HB4344 expands the Public Utility Commission of Texas's express authority to obtain criminal-history records to cover job applicants, current employees, and people who contract or may contract to provide goods or services to the …
Official caption: Relating to access to and use of criminal history record information by the Public Utility Commission of Texas.
Official report lists House author(s): Hernandez. This does not identify sponsors or amendment drafters.
Bill explanation published · Version and amendment review scope is stated below · Individual amendment records may not be separately annotated.
Bill highlights
Selected points from the published explanation. Follow each point to its source-linked context; conditions and limits may matter.
- HB4344 expands the Public Utility Commission of Texas's express authority to obtain criminal-history records to cover job applicants, current employees, and people who contract or may contract to provide goods or services to the commission.
- The act expressly authorizes obtaining records maintained or indexed by the FBI and records held by the Texas Department of Public Safety or another Texas criminal-justice agency.
- The records remain privileged, confidential and for the PUC's exclusive use.
- The PUC must destroy records obtained under the section after using them for the authorized purpose; previous law said it may destroy them.
What does it do?
HB4344 expands the Public Utility Commission of Texas’s express authority to obtain criminal-history records to cover job applicants, current employees, and people who contract or may contract to provide goods or services to the commission. The previous provision referred to the prospective-employee checks authorized by Utilities Code Section 12.107.
The act expressly authorizes obtaining records maintained or indexed by the FBI and records held by the Texas Department of Public Safety or another Texas criminal-justice agency. Access remains subject to Government Code Section 411.087, including its restrictions on federal-record access. This is authority to obtain information, not a new command to reject every applicant with a criminal record or to check every person who falls within a category.
The records remain privileged, confidential and for the PUC’s exclusive use. The amended section prohibits the PUC from releasing or disclosing FBI-obtained records to any person. For records obtained from DPS or another Texas criminal-justice agency, it retains the exceptions allowing disclosure on court order or with the subject’s consent. Those state-record exceptions should not be treated as exceptions to the separately worded FBI restriction.
The PUC must destroy records obtained under the section after using them for the authorized purpose; previous law said it may destroy them. The bill took effect September 1, 2025. It does not establish a specific numerical retention period.
What changed along the way?
The introduced bill, unchanged through House committee and engrossment, proposed federal and other state-agency access, differentiated disclosure rules and mandatory destruction. For current employees and contractors, however, it tied access to specified sensitive records or confidential information; job applicants were separately included.
The Senate substitute replaced those sensitive-access qualifications with the broader categories of all current employees and people who contract or may contract to supply goods or services. The final text matches the substitute. The amendment index lists no floor amendments. The official history records House concurrence and the governor’s June 20 signature.
For the full amendment record, open the official amendment index.
Official bill versions
Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.
Who could benefit—and who could bear the costs?
The PUC gains clearer authority to screen people involved in its work and contracting. More employees and potential contractors may be subject to checks than under the earlier proposal. Those individuals also receive express confidentiality protections and mandatory destruction after the authorized use, although the law does not itself prescribe a hiring or contracting outcome.
The final fiscal note anticipated no significant state or local fiscal impact and assumed costs could be absorbed using existing resources. It did not quantify the number of additional checks or their effect on individual employment opportunities.
Review boundary: This explains statutory authority and safeguards, not current PUC screening policies, an individual employment decision, or permission to disclose a particular federal record contrary to governing law.
Official sources
- Bill history and latest recorded action
- Bill versions, analyses and fiscal notes
- Action history and votes
- Amendment index
Catalog report retrieved 2026-10-25. Check the official record for corrections or later changes.
