[B]y the time the turf war between the Agency of Education and the Office of Professional Regulation made it to the Senate Finance Committee, their differences over the licensing of speech language pathologists and a study of the agency’s licensing process were nearly worked out.
Lawmakers voted H.562, also known as the OPR bill, out of their committee Tuesday night after stripping out language that would have moved all responsibility for licensing of speech language pathologists — clinicians who diagnose and treat communication and swallowing disorders — to the Office of Professional Regulation, even if they work in the schools.
The committee also acted on the agency’s request to be dropped from the proposed study of licensing practices at several state entities. The study and the change in licensing had originated as Senate legislation that failed to make the deadline for transfer to the House, so they were attached to H.562.
The bill, as amended by the Senate Finance Committee, passed the Senate on Wednesday.
“We are really happy the OPR bill is moving forward because there is a lot of good in there,” said Deputy Secretary of State Chris Winters.
Every year an OPR bill makes adjustments to the different professions overseen by the office, which is under the secretary of state’s purview. This year’s bill included provisions that had set off a firestorm between the Education Agency and the Office of Professional Regulation over which entity licenses speech language pathologists. It also would have included the agency in the study of licensing practices, to which the agency objected.
The version of the bill the Senate Government Operations Committee had endorsed would have required seven agencies that license 38 professions that are not currently regulated by OPR to provide data to determine if it would be better to move these agencies’ licensing to OPR. The licensing of all educators was to be included in this study.
Winters said it was an attempt to find “willing partners and opportunities to improve professional regulation and save taxpayer dollars.”
When testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, Education Secretary Rebecca Holcombe asked members to consider an amendment that would drop not only her agency from the study but the six other agencies that aren’t currently being regulated by OPR. Holcombe said the request came from the administration.
“The law refers to other state agencies outside of OPR’s current jurisdiction — we have concerns about that — and it refers specifically to the Agency of Education,” Holcombe said, adding, “The purpose of this is to figure out which agency licensing to transfer to OPR.”
The Education Agency has said it is heavily regulated by the federal government and there are specific aspects of the state’s responsibility to ensure that teachers are considered “highly qualified.” There is a relationship, she said, between teacher quality and equity and professional development, and it is all tied up with the federal government. She also said the agency lacks staffing and money that would be needed to generate the information for OPR.
“We are very concerned about alignment between federal and state policy because the federal government pays two-thirds of our bills,” Holcombe said.
Rep. Emily Long, D-Newfane, who sits on the Education Committee, said she shared the secretary’s concerns. “AOE needs to ensure we have high-quality teachers in the classroom. Educators should oversee professional education licensing since they know what is required.”
Winters said he knew the administration objected to requiring the Education Agency to collect the data because it owes so many reports to the General Assembly and is understaffed. But he said he was surprised the administration objected to the data gathering requirement for other agencies.
“We have had several conversations with the administration about how consolidating licensing functions might make sense in some places, and know they are in favor of doing this survey of the state licensing landscape,” Winters said.
Ultimately, the Senate passed a version that relieved only the Education Agency of the requirement.
The effort to consolidate licensing of speech language pathologists at the Office of Professional Regulation failed as well.
In the past, all SLPs were licensed at the Agency of Education, regardless of whether they worked in a clinical or education setting. Under a change the Legislature made last year, SLPs who work in the schools currently have to acquire two licenses — one from the OPR and one from the Education Agency.
Winters said the secretary of state’s office had thought that with that change, it would be taking on all SLP licensure and the agency would still be able to issue an educator endorsement. “We also expected they would charge some small fee for that endorsement because the requirements are nearly identical in both places, but it would still involve some small amount of work for the AOE to process,” he said.
The agency, on the other hand, still had to issue a teaching license to go with the endorsement for any speech language pathologist employed by a school. Some practitioners found this counterproductive and didn’t like paying two fees, so they brought it to lawmakers hoping that all SLPs could get one license from one agency as they had in the past, but instead of that being the agency, they wanted it to be the OPR.
This year’s legislation would have moved all primary licensing for about 1,200 such educators to the OPR, and they would no longer get an endorsement from the agency. That would have cost the agency about $100,000 a year in lost fees, it said. There is even more significant revenue associated with licensing all the teachers in the state.
The current truce may have to weather another round in the next legislative season, since there are already rumblings that it will reappear.
Long said this is about more than an interagency disagreement. “This is about our children’s education,” she said. “It is about having high-quality teachers in the classroom. It is about the best agency to license our teachers to ensure every child has a high-quality instructor in their classroom.”
