As the nation awaits the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Democrats celebrated the birthday of Massachusetts’ health care law, nicknamed “Romneycare” after its creator, then-Gov. Mitt Romney. April 12, 2012, marked the six-year anniversary of Romney’s signing into law the health care reform model that President Barack Obama and Congress adopted, in some respects, for the nation in 2010, with the intent of expanding health coverage to millions of Americans. Romney, the expected Republican candidate for president, has said that if elected he would repeal the federal law, dubbed “Obamacare.”

Since the passage of the 2010 Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) reform bill, employers face ongoing changes in their use and access to criminal history information. By enhancing regulations around criminal history checks, the CORI bill aims to create greater employment opportunities for past criminal offenders. CORI reform affects both regular employers and certain regulated employers, such as schools and long-term care facilities, which are required by law to obtain additional CORI information. Employers that do not abide by new CORI regulations may face steep fines as high as tens of thousands of dollars for each offense. Below, we’ll review some of the main changes to CORI regulations that employers should be aware of:

The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 8.2% in March and a broader measure dropped to 14.5% from 14.9% the prior month, but a separate survey noted that the economy added a paltry 120,000. Why the drop?