California Board of Optometry approves responses to legislative sunset review, requests higher fee ceiling and further review of UC allocation

The California State Board of Optometry on April 11 approved a package of responses to a legislative sunset-review background paper and voted on several related requests to the Legislature, including asking lawmakers to increase statutory fee ceilings and to review the board's recurring $16-per-renewal remittance to the University of California.

The board voted to approve the draft responses prepared by staff and to send them to the Assembly Business and Professions Committee and the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee. As part of its action, the board agreed to ask the Legislature to raise the statutory ceiling on fees so the board could implement future regulatory fee increases if needed; to request legislative review of the UC remittance with the possibility of reducing the outflow; and to ask the Legislature for additional enforcement tools and resources to address unlicensed activity and online optical entities.

Why it…