This was a very easy week, as only a few committees were meeting to finish their second committee bills (and, of course, Finance met for four days to finalize the budget.)
I went to Senate ED&A, intending to present two bills from my committee, but since the sponsors didn’t show, I also presented two more! HB 180, on critical incident stress management teams, was a simple fix of the required training, and the committee promptly voted to pass it. HB 183, on incident reporting requirements for EMTs, was tougher because it had gone to a different committee and I had no idea why they chose a week rather than a day to report.
HB 263, allowing remote hearings of the board of tax and land appeals, was also stranded in the Senate, but at least I had seen very similar language in the budget. HB 435, exempting computer and software engineers from licensure as professional engineers, was from my committee, and the sponsor showed up, but I had to explain the licensing scheme for engineers. Basically, only some types of engineers need to be licensed, and only those with the final responsibility for a machine or a structure, so people in business for themselves, or chief engineers in larger companies. Two representatives of engineering societies came to testify and stated that this bill would cause confusion. Not sure who would be confused, but the Senators resolved to contemplate the bill.
My committee met on our two bills, and HB 538, reallocating positions in the liquor commission, was much simpler with the chair of liquor commission there to explain the bill. After some discussion, centered on the proper processing of these positions, we voted unanimously to recommend the bill.
HB 538, requiring training in child abuse as a condition of healthcare licensing, was more contentious. I moved to kill the bill, citing that it did not do the procedural details right (on which we all agreed) and that the board of medicine could require, or encourage, this training without instructions from us. There was some debate on how important the training was, and whether we should retain the bill to fix it. I objected because I thought repeating this training every two years for all providers was excessive; my vice chair warned of problems with similar training in the few other states that mandate it. We voted to kill it, 9-7, on a partisan basis.
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