The debate about the management of occupational licensing boards in Alabama, especially some that have been cited for collecting unauthorized fees from licensees and not following state laws, isn’t over yet in this legislative session.
Last year, the Joint Sunset Committee, a panel of lawmakers that regularly reauthorizes the dozens of boards that license and collect fees from thousands of Alabama workers, from barbers to bail bondsmen, recommended the Alabama Massage Therapy Board be dissolved this year.
Sen. Garlan Gudger, R-Cullman, who is on the Sunset Committee, filed Senate Bill 137 to end the old board and create a new one.
The bill was substituted in a House committee late last month for a version that also creates a new Office of Occupational and Professional Licensing within the Alabama Department of Labor.
Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, had attempted to create that office and put more than two dozen boards under it in a separate bill this session that never received a Senate vote.
“You had a bill that died, and you tried to bury it in this?” Rep. Napoleon Bracy, D-Saraland asked Rep. Ben Robbins, R-Sylacauga, on the House floor Thursday. Robbins was carrying the massage board bill in that chamber.
The House amended the bill to take the new occupational office out of it and sent it back to the Senate. There, senators voted not to accept the change and instead go to a conference committee to try to work out the differences between various versions of the bill. That will happen this week.
There are three days remaining in the session and if a version of the bill doesn’t pass, the massage board “sunsets” and there will be no body to license massage therapists in the state later this year.
“I am not sure of the intent of the (House’s) changes, but by us going to conference, it will allow the whole Legislature the opportunity to discuss and complete the best bill possible for the massage industry,” Gudger told Alabama Daily News late last week.
The massage board last year was the target of several lawmakers’ ire. A review by the Alabama Department of Examiners of Public Accounts, which regularly audits all state government agencies, found 13 issues with the massage board, including Executive Director Keith Warren, a private contractor who manages more than a dozen boards, being paid his monthly fee before services were provided, noncompliance with open meeting rules, waiting two months before notifying the Secretary of State of a board member resignation and issuing a license to someone who hadn’t met requirements. The board was still charging licensees fees outside of what is allowed under a law change earlier in the year.
Also sent to a conference committee Thursday was the bill to extend the authority of the Alabama Board of Electrical Contractors.
Last year, Sunset Committee members questioned why that board, also managed by Warren, collected a $75 provisional licensing fee, one of more than a dozen it administers to contractors, after being told years ago it didn’t have the legal authority to do so.
Along with Gudger, Elliott will also be on the conference committee.
“There have been huge issues with the management of those boards and they need to be addressed,” Elliott said.
Warren has defended his company’s management of boards and said any issues should be addressed on a case-by-case basis, not legislation to create a new state agency.