Committee adopts substitute and favors SB 44 to expand fingerprint background checks for additional licensed professions

Senator Vickers appeared before the House Economic Development Workforce Services Committee to present SB 44, a bill to coordinate criminal-history background checks across state professional licensing and to add several professions to the fingerprinting requirement. The committee adopted a first substitute and voted to recommend the substitute favorably to the full House.

The bill’s sponsor, Senator Vickers, said the substitute does not change policy intent but makes technical corrections and aligns background-check standards across professions. Mark Steinegold, director of the Division of Professional Licensing (DOPL) at the Utah Department of Commerce, testified the department currently performs comprehensive criminal-history checks for about 40% of licensed individuals and that adding the listed professions would raise that share by roughly 20 percentage points.

The substitute adds a set of medical and allied professions and other categories for fingerprint-based checks; testimony and committee discussion identified the professions added by the substitute as physicians (MD and DO), physician assistants, podiatrists, dentists and dental hygienists, optometrists, anesthesiologists, chiropractors, naturopathic physicians, occupational therapists and certain contractors. Steinegold said the department used four public-safety criteria—risk of physical harm, sexual misconduct, financial harm and emotional/psychological harm—to guide which professions should require fingerprint checks.

The substitute also contains a technical change to allow existing physician-related funds to be used similarly to funds already available to nurses and pharmacists (for education and enforcement functions), not to create a new fund or new revenue source. Committee members pressed on whether a criminal record automatically bars licensure (witnesses said statutes require individualized review and consideration of aggravating and mitigating circumstances) and whether checks apply retroactively to currently licensed practitioners (the department said initial licensure is the primary focus and retroactive or “wrap-back” checks require additional resources).

A public commenter who said she had a poor experience with construction work supported fingerprinting for contractors. After discussion the committee adopted the first substitute by voice vote, then voted to recommend first substitute SB 44 favorably to the full House.