Secretary of State's office outlines priorities: election-year funding, OPR licensure updates and public-protection measures
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Summary
Deputy Secretary Lauren Hubert and OPR Director Jen Cohen told the committee they seek election-year funding amid declining federal grants and will press OPR bills to create licensure pathways, reduce regulatory burdens and strengthen oversight of massage establishments and other professions.
Deputy Secretary of State Lauren Hubert and Jen Cohen, director of the Office of Professional Regulation (OPR), presented the Secretary of State's office's legislative priorities to the Senate Government Operations Committee on Jan. 6.
Hubert said the office oversees elections, business services, OPR and the Vermont State Archives and Records Center. She warned that federal grant support for elections (notably HAVA funding) has declined substantially from earlier levels and that the office will likely request additional state election-year funding to maintain cybersecurity and operational systems.
Cohen outlined OPR's three-year themes for this session: create new professional pathways, remove unnecessary regulatory barriers, and strengthen public protection. Specific items she listed included a standalone early-childhood educator licensure bill for nonpublic settings, a limited-scope academic dental license to support a proposed dental-school satellite, specialty prescribing authority for doctorate-level psychologists (previously acted on in the House), and an optometry scope-expansion bill for certain surgical and injection procedures.
Cohen also described bills to reduce duplicative midwife reporting, clarify funeral-service definitions to include cremation and natural organic reduction, and remove a statutory restriction linking pharmacist-prescribed vaccines to a CDC advisory list so the state Department of Health can approve vaccines more responsively.
On consumer and safety tools, Cohen said OPR will seek statutory authority to register massage establishments (in addition to licensing individuals) to allow inspections, credential displays and enforcement action; she said roughly one-third of OPR complaints touch on human-trafficking concerns. Cohen also proposed rulemaking authority for a voluntary alternative-to-discipline program to help clinicians with substance-use disorders or minor practice issues seek remediation without permanent license sanctions.
Next steps: OPR staff said they have filed testimony and will follow up with documents requested by committee members; they said a large mental-health statutory reorganization will likely be pursued next session because the new executive officer for mental health will start after February.