MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The Alabama Sunset Committee narrowly approved a series of major reforms Tuesday to improve the transparency and operations of the Alabama Board of Pharmacy, which audits have found to have regularly acted outside its authority in recent years.
“We believe that this should help a lot of the issues that were found by the auditors and set a pathway for the board to act in a way that they shouldn’t have an audit report like they’ve had in the past,” said Sen. Keith Kelley, R-Anniston, who worked on the proposed reforms alongside Rep. Kerry Underwood, R-Tuscumbia.
The Sunset Committee regularly reauthorizes the dozens of state boards that license and regulate various professions in the state, from cosmetologists to dentists to bail bondsmen. Its recommendation about the pharmacy board will be considered by the full Legislature in the upcoming session.
The most recent audit of the pharmacy board, which oversees the licensing of pharmacies and pharmacists in the state, found 14 significant issues with the board’s operations, including the board charging higher license fees than what’s authorized by law, and violating open meeting laws.
During the meeting, held at the Alabama State House, Underwood shared with members all of the proposed reforms to the board, which include expanding its membership from five members to nine. The additional four members would be made up of two pharmacy technicians, one member at-large licensed in a health care profession, and another member at-large of any professional background.
The new members would be appointed by the governor by Oct. 1 under the proposal, with Underwood telling Alabama Daily News that he believed the expanded membership would help solve a lot of the board’s operational issues.
“There are a lot of pharmacy techs that are licensed that have no representation on the board; I think that’s a good add, because they pay their fees like everybody else,” Underwood told ADN. “So taking the board from five to nine, I think, gives enough alternate opinions in there that gets that where it needs to be.”
The proposed reforms would also reduce the term length for board members from five to two years, as well as limit the total number of terms any member can serve to two.
Another significant change included in the proposal is that the board would be required to appoint a new executive secretary, who could not have served in any capacity for the board during the previous five years.
The board’s current executive secretary, Donna Yeatman, was appointed to her role in 2018 after having served on the board as a member since 2015. She currently earns about $276,000 per year.
On the decision to axe the current executive secretary under the proposal, Underwood told ADN it was a matter of more closely adhering to the state’s ethics laws.
“It’s aggressive, but if you’ve been on the board, then you have some influence to say ‘I want to serve in this role,’ and so we felt like in the spirit of ethics that just gave too much influence,” he said.
The proposal would also remove the board’s authority to set non-disciplinary administrative penalties, with the board found to have issued higher fines to licensees than what state law permits in exchange for pending violations to be dropped.
“Our sunset meetings, there were all these issues with diversionary, meaning ‘okay, you’ve had this mistake, we’re going to keep it quiet and you just pay us this fee over five years and nobody will know about it’ – that goes away,” Underwood told ADN. “There’s no diversionary program in this, whatever happens, happens.”
Committee members were split on the proposal. Rep. Randall Shedd, R-Baileyton, expressed concerns that if the proposal failed to pass through the Legislature, it could leave the state without a pharmacy board, and potentially handicap the state’s ability to properly regulate pharmacies and pharmacists.
“I appreciate your work, I don’t mean to be a problem for you, I’ve just got some worries about it, especially if we get to a point where, if there was so much controversy, that nothing passed,” Shedd said. “That really worries me because this is an important board.”
Sen. Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, expressed similar concerns, and he, along with Shedd and Rep. Chris Pringle, R-Mobile, voted against the proposal.
However, Underwood, Kelly, and Reps. Margie Wilcox, R-Mobile, and Linda Coleman-Madison, D-Birmingham, voted in favor of the measure, narrowly pushing it out of the committee and setting it up to be deliberated on the House and Senate floors in the coming legislative session.