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Office of Professional Regulation proposes fee increases, new surcharges and repeal of racetrack oversight
Summary
The Office of Professional Regulation outlined a package of technical statutory changes Wednesday including new and increased fees, a proposed disciplinary surcharge, a request to exempt boards from a five‑year termination provision and repeal of motor-vehicle-racing oversight; the committee discussed but did not vote.
The Office of Professional Regulation (OPR) on Thursday presented a package of technical statutory amendments to the House Government Operations & Military Affairs Committee that would add and raise licensing and service fees, authorize a disciplinary surcharge, shift how the agency charges for data services and remove the agency’s authority over motor-vehicle-racing oversight.
OPR Deputy Secretary of State Lauren Hibbert and Jen Colon, general counsel for the Office of Professional Regulation, told the committee the changes are intended to shore up agency revenue and fix drafting errors in prior fee bills. “A lot of these changes are driven in part because the Office of Professional Regulation is running at such a deficit,” Hibbert said. She and Colon asked the committee to consider the package and said they will supply follow-up data on some items.
The proposal includes several specific fee changes and new charges intended to offset the cost of licensing and enforcement. Among the items discussed were: elimination of a refund on the $25 “second chance” criminal-history review; raising the license verification fee from $20 to $30; restoring a $200 fee for electrology shops; charging $50 for apprenticeship pathway applications; establishing a $100 fee for added specialty authorizations; creating a $250 disciplinary-action surcharge to be assessed after adjudication; and raising the administrative penalty for unauthorized practice to $5,000 from the current $2,500. “The cost of enforcement per case … [is] well over $3,000 per case,” Colon said, arguing that a modest surcharge would help offset enforcement costs.
The committee also discussed a previously proposed $1,500 fee for a data feed OPR provides to facilities and other institutions. Colon said OPR now prefers statutory authorization to permit the Secretary of State to set fees for voluntary services—so the office can set variable charges at the Secretary’s level rather than fix a single statutory amount. Colon described the data feed as a compliance feature institutions use to verify license status each morning and said the user base ranges from single facilities to large institutions such as the University of Vermont.
On regulatory scope, OPR asked the committee to strike motor-vehicle-racing from the statutes—arguing its sunset review found little enforcement activity and limited public-protection benefit from OPR’s unique racetrack inspections. Colon said the agency’s report concluded: “OPR’s regulation of racetracks hasn’t yielded any enforcement action.” The package would remove chapter 93 in Title 26, the motor-vehicle-racing chapter.
Committee members asked for additional data before acting. Representative Newton asked whether the fee changes would solve OPR’s budget shortfall; Hibbert replied the package would be “a net help” but “it will not solve the OPR budget crisis.” Representatives also pressed for counts and details: OPR said it receives about 800 complaints per year, investigates roughly 600 and prosecutes between 50 and 200 cases annually. OPR estimated there are fewer than 50 electrology shops affected by the restored shop fee.
No motions or votes were recorded during the presentation; the committee indicated it planned to take up the bill quickly and requested follow-up materials. Committee members also raised technical and user-experience issues with OPR’s online license-renewal tools, and staff said improvements are on the agency’s IT roadmap.
The committee did not adopt any statutory changes at the session; OPR staff said they would be in touch with legislators about amendments and data requests as the bill moves forward.
