Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Occupational Licensing topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
DOPL tells JFAC it’s cutting costs, using fee holidays and targeted raises to rebalance board funds
Summary
The Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses (DOPL) reported consolidation progress, staffing and fee strategies to bring board cash balances to a 30%–150% five-year rolling-average target, noted inspector pay increases to reduce vacancies, and defended a request to replace nine vehicles while arguing fee reallocation across boards would be unpopular with licensees.
Legislative analysts and the administrator of the Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses (DOPL) briefed the JFAC committee on Feb. 24 on consolidation, fund balances and efforts to align licensing-board accounts with statutory targets.
Frances Lippitt, a budget and policy analyst with the Legislative Services Office, summarized DOPL’s structure since a 2020 executive order that consolidated several licensing agencies. She reported the division now oversees four bureaus and dozens of boards, has roughly 267.2 authorized full-time-equivalent positions, and uses a state regulatory fund plus two miscellaneous revenue funds for logging and industrial safety programs. Lippitt said the division follows a practice—codified last session as section 67-26, Idaho Code—of reviewing year-end balances and adjusting licensing fees if an account falls below 30% or above 150% of a five-year rolling average of expenditures.
Lippitt and Administrator Russ Barron described recent budget activity: personnel-cost authorizations, one-time requests (replacement vehicles, IT hardware), and program-maintenance changes. Barron said DOPL has reduced overall expenditures by about 20% since consolidation and improved timeliness for licensing, inspections and investigations, though some boards remain above or below the target balance. He described a three-way distribution roughly equal among boards: about one-third in the target zone, one-third below and one-third above; the division has worked on mergers, fee adjustments and fee holidays to rebalance accounts.
Senators pressed the agency on a roughly $4 million increase in personnel costs between FY2025 and FY2027 despite steady FTP counts and a drop in operating expenses. Lippitt deferred to Barron, who said actual spending versus anticipated spending (salary savings) and benefit cost assumptions explained the variance, and that some fluctuations are expected in a newer agency. Barron also noted several strategies to rebalance accounts: increasing fees for boards below 30%, decreasing fees where balances exceed 150%, implementing fee holidays for certain renewals, eliminating several boards through mergers, and reducing costs through operational changes.
Committee members raised concerns about inspection backlogs and business impacts. Barron said increased inspector pay filled vacancies, improved retention and enabled roughly 95% of inspections to be completed as scheduled, but that elevator inspections depend on third-party vendors whose availability can delay completions.
On vehicle replacement requests, Barron said nine vehicles would have over 150,000 miles by July 1 and that the division selected lower-cost vehicle models to reduce the requested amount. He acknowledged pending legislation could change vehicle needs but said aging equipment would impede inspection timeliness if replacements were deferred.
What happens next: DOPL’s request and the division’s fee adjustments will proceed through the budget-setting process; committee members signaled continued oversight, and Barron said the agency will continue reporting on board balances and implementation of fee adjustments and mergers.
