The Texas Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors approved a broad package of rule adoptions intended to implement recent legislative changes and to update continuing-education and renewal procedures. The board voted by voice to adopt the rules after staff said the package had been posted in the Texas Register and the public-comment window had closed.

The package implements multiple statutory changes, including provisions cited by staff as "Senate Bill 681" and "Senate Bill 1259," and includes modifications tied to veterans'and criminal-conviction provisions. Staff reported two public comments on the set and recommended limited changes. One public commenter asked that surveyors be allowed to "roll over" accumulated continuing-education hours; the board's advisory committee (SAC) recommended against that change. As Lance Kenny, the agency's executive director, summarized it: "So every 2 years you need to get your hours."

Under the adopted approach, Texas surveyors moving to a two-year renewal window will not be able to bank a large number of hours and carry them forward indefinitely; staff and SAC supported a compromise that requires four hours of ethics every two years for surveyors (instead of the six proposed by a commenter). The board described that as a balancing decision between the engineering and surveying sides of the profession. Staff also said a set of new rules (items labeled u and v in the agenda) will be published with a non-substantive lettering correction.

Board members raised a procedural concern when they discovered a numbering/omission discrepancy between the posted Texas Register and the agenda packet; the board chose to re-vote and then adopted item 14 (renumbered a through w) explicitly "as listed in the register." Staff said they will correct the meeting minutes and republish accurate numbering as needed.

Why this matters: the changes will affect continuing-education schedules and the cadence for renewals across thousands of licensed engineers and surveyors in Texas, and they implement statutory changes that alter licensing and criminal-history practices. The board made no change to a separate continuing-education rule (01.01.2017) that staff flagged as unchanged in the package.

What's next: the rule package will be published with the corrected numbering; staff indicated some items are effective once published in the Texas Register and others will take effect as noted in the agency release.