Committee hears competing testimony on massage-therapy compact and education-hour increase

House Bill 232 would both raise required training hours for massage therapists and join an interstate compact to create a multistate licensing privilege. Mai Lin Petrine, director of legal and regulatory affairs for the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards (FSMTB), told the committee the bill’s compact language is the product of a long stakeholder process and opposed amendments she said would jeopardize public safety and break the compact’s contractual uniformity. She described the compact as a contract among states that requires identical language and said five states have already adopted it.

Committee members asked whether increasing classroom hours (from 500 to 625) is intended to align with the compact and whether the change would help students access federal Pell grants. Petrine said the compact itself does not require a minimum number of hours but the 625-hour proposal would put programs over a 600-hour threshold that can enable Pell eligibility, increasing access to education. Stan Jones, representing the Georgia chapter of the American Massage Therapy Association via Goldome Partners, said providers favored amendments and grandfathering so older practitioners would not be excluded; he argued Georgia’s lower hour requirement currently prevents some therapists from participating in the compact and that amendments would broaden access to the multistate license.

Committee members also discussed an unusual letter received that referenced the Department of Defense’s interest in portability for military members and their spouses; witnesses said that the compact work was originally supported by federal grant funding to help service members transfer credentials across states. The chair declined to act on the bill at this meeting, asked parties to continue negotiations and accepted offers to supply additional information and proposed substitute language for future consideration.