Your State House 1/17/2025

by Carol McGuire

This week, my committee started with orientation, getting presentations from the JLCAR staff on the administrative rules process; from the retirement system on pensions; and the OPLC (Office of Professional Licensure and Certification) on licensing and board operations. This was good background information for the new members and reminders for the experienced ones.

We also started holding public hearings on our bills. HB 271, eliminating a test to qualify for a license as an social work associate, had looked very simple on just reading the bill, eliminating a barrier to licensure and so to employment. Not so; apparently this associate license was created in 2021, the rules adopted in 2024, and one person has qualified for the license to date. The community mental health centers employ people who work within the associate’s scope of practice, and regularly bill Medicaid for their services, with or without a license! These centers have a waiver from Medicaid to do so; the issue of the license is to allow them to bill private insurance, which in this case typically requires a license. Other employers (hospitals, for one) would also like to be able to bill specifically for these services, for both private insurance and Medicaid.

So the employers want the bill to pass, but the professional association is split: some in favor of getting more people into the profession, others with concerns about lowering standards. So I sent the bill to subcommittee to fight it out.

HB 267, on animal chiropractors, was a slightly revised version of a bill from last year, which had passed the House and Senate but was vetoed by the Governor. The revision was to clarify that only qualified veterinarians and chiropractors who had taken animal chiropractic training would be allowed the exemption from licensing. With support from the Humane Society and no opposition, I expect it to pass the committee. (I’d forgotten the new rule about posting executive sessions, so we couldn’t vote on it immediately.)

HB 85, my bill creating a temporary student license for respiratory therapists, had a few questions but no opposition.

HB 82, a collection of minor statutory corrections in the licensing statutes, was a collection of cleanup language that had been presented last year in bills that had been killed for other reasons (for example, we decided not to combine the landscape architects with the architects, but we lost the statutory cleanup when we killed the bill.) People from several professions mentioned in the bill testified their concern about changes, and I had an amendment with a minor fix that I’d forgotten when drafting the bill. It’s going to subcommittee for a thorough combing.

I plan to hold more public hearings over the next two weeks and expect a session day on February 6.

We’d like to thank Carol McGuire for the Op-Ed. As a reminder, authors’ opinions are their own and may not represent those of Grok Media, LLC, GraniteGrok.com, its sponsors, readers, authors, or advertisers. Submit Op-Eds to steve@granitegrok.com

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