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WSBA governors renew push to include public members on regulatory boards
Summary
Governors at the Washington State Bar Association discussed ongoing regulatory reform efforts to add public members to licensing and regulatory boards, with proponents citing multi-year work and favorable pilot feedback and others urging careful design and testing.
Governor Couch, a member of the Washington State Bar Association Board of Governors, used the board’s governor roundtable to reiterate a multi-year effort to place public members on regulatory boards, saying the work has been “over 7 years” in development and pledging to keep pressing the issue.
The effort, Couch said, has been piloted on other bodies and received positive feedback: “We’ve already been testing this in other boards and in other task forces,” he said, and added that participants on those panels have found public members “incredibly supportive.” Couch urged colleagues to reframe the question away from whether public members should be allowed and toward designing governance “if we were starting over.”
Why it matters: adding public members to boards that regulate professions could change how policy and disciplinary matters are discussed and decided. Proponents argued that several Washington regulatory bodies already include public members and that broader inclusion would align with practices in other states.
During the exchange governors referenced several licensing bodies as benchmarks and framed the idea as part of a larger regulatory reform discussion. Couch said he frequently hears pushback about change and recommended using examples from other states to guide design choices.
Discussion versus decisions: the roundtable discussion did not produce a resolution or formal action on policy change. Several governors raised design and implementation concerns, and Couch characterized his role as continuing to raise the issue and to help educate colleagues over time. No vote or motion to change WSBA rules or board composition was made during the session.
Key context and next steps: governors said the idea has been trialed in task forces and other boards; Couch indicated he would continue to bring the issue forward and to help build education around it. Participants did not specify a timetable or formal pathway for any rule change during the roundtable.
Ending: governors left the topic open for future discussion and education; no formal direction to staff or a committee was recorded during the meeting.
