A lawmaker wants to stop companies and organizations from using taxpayer money to fund non-disclosure agreements.
The issue came up recently with the now-closed online charter school, ECOT, which required severance packages to include these agreements.
Records show that the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow spent more than $500,000 on severance packages with non-disclosure agreements attached.
ECOT was accused of fabricating student attendance data in order to get millions of state dollars.
Democratic Rep. Kristin Boggs said NDAs are just another example of wasting public funds.
“There’s no reason why we should be spending a half a million dollars to hush employees about potentially bad and wrongful practices of an organization that has been publicly funded for so many years,” she said.
Boggs’ bill would stop groups from attaching these agreements to publicly funded severance packages and give the state the power to go after that money in the future if they do.