The bill would amend the Business & Commerce Code to require certain disclosures from entities soliciting another individual to retrieve business filing documents held by the Secretary of State (SOS) on their behalf. Regulated entities would be required to disclose that the entity is not a governmental entity and that the documents could be directly obtained from SOS.
The bill would require SOS to develop a procedure to investigate complaints related to the violation of these disclosure requirements and would provide that violators could be subject to a civil penalty. The bill would authorize the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) or an applicable county or district attorney to recover any civil penalties.
It is assumed that any investigations of violations required by the SOS under the provisions of the bill could be absorbed within existing resources.
According to the OAG, any additional legal workload resulting from investigations or enforcement actions could be reasonably absorbed with existing resources.
According to the Office of Court Administration, no significant fiscal impact to the state court system is anticipated.
It is anticipated that any civil penalties recovered as a result of this bill would have no significant fiscal impact.