Honorable Mike Hamilton, Chair, House Committee on Licensing & Administrative Procedures
FROM:
John S O'Brien, Director, Legislative Budget Board
IN RE:
HB1123 by Dutton (Relating to the regulation of athlete agents; providing administrative and criminal penalties.), Committee Report 1st House, Substituted
The provisions of the bill that are the subject of this analysis are the provisions that would deal with criminal sanctions for athlete agents. The bill would amend the Occupations Code to enhance the punishment prescribed to an athlete agent who commits a criminal offense, from a Class A Misdemeanor to a third degree felony, if the offense involves furnishing a thing of value to an athlete or certain related individuals before the athlete completes the last intercollegiate sports contest, or committing or causing to commit an act that causes an athlete to violate certain athletics rules.
A Class A Misdemeanor is punishable by confinement in county jail for a term not to exceed one year and/or a fine not to exceed $4,000. A felony of the third degree is punishable by confinement in prison for a term from 2 to 10 years and, in addition to confinement, an optional fine not to exceed $10,000.
Expanding the list of behaviors for which a penalty is applied for any criminal offense is expected to result in increased demands upon the correctional resources of counties or of the State due to longer terms of probation, or longer terms of confinement in county jails or prison. When an offense is changed from a misdemeanor to a felony, there is a transfer of the burden of confinement of convicted offenders from the counties to the State. In the case of this bill, the impact on correctional populations would depend on how many persons would be prosecuted under the provisions of the bill, and the extent to which punishment would be enhanced under the proposed statute compared to existing statute. In fiscal year 2010, less than 5 individuals were arrested, and less than 5 were placed under misdemeanor community supervision for a criminal offense relating to athlete agents' regulations. For this analysis, it is assumed the number of offenders convicted under this statute would not result in a significant impact on the programs and workload of State corrections agencies or on the demand for resources and services of those agencies.