House Bill 5360

To add twelve misdemeanors to the grounds for denying, suspending, or revoking a professional bondsman’s license, thus making the standards the same as for a bail enforcement agent license; strengthen other eligibility criteria for both licenses by adding minimum age, education, legal United States residency, and other requirements; expand revocation grounds for a bondsman license; set mandatory prelicensing requirements for bondsmen and allow the Commissioner of Public Safety to mandate training as a condition of renewing a bail enforcement agent’s license; require bail enforcement agent license applicants to give the commissioner evidence of at least one hundred thousand dollars general liability insurance coverage and other insurance to cover recovery activities and personal injury for false arrest, false imprisonment, libel and slander; require the said commissioner to approve bail enforcement agents’ trade names and ban names implying any association with a town, county, state, or federal government agency or which may tend to mislead the public; revoke automatically the bail enforcement agent’s license and special gun permit of a professional bondsman whose license is suspended or revoked and make failure to surrender the license or permit within five days of written revocation notice a class C misdemeanor, punishable by up to three months imprisonment, a fine of up to five hundred dollars, or both; require bondsmen to use the services of licensed bail enforcement agents only and produce and keep a record available for law enforcement inspection; make the current one hundred dollar license application and renewal fee nonrefundable if the application is denied or an applicant cancels it or fails to provide all necessary information, and explicitly specifies a one hundred dollar renewal fee, thus making the law conform to practice; require bondsmen to notify the commissioner of their old and new addresses within two business days after a change of address, a standard that currently applies to bail enforcement agents; increase the penalty for violating the bondsmen laws to a class D felony, the same as the existing penalty for violating bail enforcement agent laws; and to make technical changes.

In the House of Representatives

• PS

  Sponsor

In the Senate

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In the House of Representatives Feb 18 – Mar 4

1. Feb 18Introduced and sent to Public Safety and Security Committee
2. Feb 27Heard in Public Safety and Security Committee
3. Mar 4Public Safety and Security Committee recommended it and sent it to Judiciary Committee