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Committee approves licensure rule updates for engineers and land surveyors, lowers continuing education requirement
Summary
The House Business Committee approved pending rules from the Idaho Board of Licensure of Professional Engineers and Professional Land Surveyors, including a reduction in required continuing education from 30 to 24 hours and a reciprocal-licensure clarification for international applicants.
The House Business Committee approved docket 24-3201-2401, updates to rules for the Idaho Board of Licensure of Professional Engineers and Professional Land Surveyors that include a reduction in required continuing education hours and changes to reciprocal-licensure procedures.
Jessica Spoya, licensing and registration program manager at the Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses, told the committee the division and board held five open board meetings and two public hearings during the zero-based regulation review. “I would now like to specifically highlight the following changes,” Spoya said, and described reductions to continuing education and revisions to reciprocity and education verification language.
Key changes include lowering continuing education for engineers from 30 hours to 24 hours per renewal cycle to conform with Idaho Code 67-9416A, and giving the board the ability to license applicants reciprocating from other countries without requiring them to complete U.S.-style college-level general education courses when equivalent education can be documented. Spoya said many international applicants have substantial engineering coursework but lack semester-level U.S. general-education credits because those credits were completed in secondary education abroad; the proposed change would allow the board to consider high-school transcripts when evaluating equivalency.
Representative Ehlers and others questioned whether the waiver would apply only to international applicants; Spoya confirmed the change is aimed at reciprocity applicants from other countries and that the board would request high-school transcripts where needed to verify general-education equivalency. Representative Harris questioned the continuing-education reduction and whether the state should instead eliminate continuing-education requirements; Spoya said the change follows a statutory directive to use the average amount among contiguous states and that the board followed national model practices.
The committee approved the docket by voice vote. Committee members did not record a roll-call tally in the transcript.
