Poll: Credit reports fair game in hiring

DENVER – Results from a poll of Colorado small-business owners released today found huge opposition to extending the state’s sales tax to labor and services and support for the use of credit reports in making hiring decisions on job applicants.

Every year, the National Federation of Independent Business, an organization that lobbies on behalf of small business in Colorado and the nation, polls its members on state and national issues vital to their ability to own, operate and grow their enterprises.

The 2013 NFIB State Member Ballot asked four questions:

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Should Colorado become a right-to-work state?
Yes: 81 percent
No: 14 percent
Undecided: 5 percent

Should employers be restricted from reviewing a job applicant’s credit report before making a hiring decision?
Yes: 30 percent
No: 61 percent
Undecided: 9 percent

Should states expand Medicaid coverage for all individuals up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, as envisioned by the new federal health-care law?
Yes: 7 percent
No: 83 percent
Undecided: 10 percent

Should Colorado make labor and services subject to the state sales tax?
Yes: 2 percent
No: 97 percent
Undecided: 1 percent

“I expect the credit report and Medicaid issues to surface when the Legislature sits down for business in January,´ said Tony Gagliardi, NFIB’s Colorado state director.

“Extending the state’s sales tax to labor and services is a perennial discussion,” the NFIB said in a press statement, “but the lopsided opposition to it from the people Colorado needs to turn its economy around will have lawmakers taking notice.”

The Nashville, Tennessee-based NFIB has state offices in all 50 state capitals and claims a national membership base of about 350,000. The NFIB’s Colorado chapter endorsed one Democrat and 48 Republican candidates for the state Legislature in the 2012 election.