After over 20 years without a state labor department, Florida Rep. Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, has refiled legislation for the third year in a row to re-establish such an agency in Florida, which — among other things — would be empowered to investigate complaints of wage theft. Although it’s rarely discussed today by politicians in either major party, Florida lawmakers dissolved the state Department of Labor and Economic Security back in the early 2000s at the behest of then-Gov. Jeb Bush. The explicit goal of the move was to identify workforce programs, divisions and duties that could be “eliminated, consolidated, or privatized.”