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Committee advances package of licensing and transparency bills; open-data portal and regulated-professions report included
Summary
The committee released a group of bills affecting professional licensing quorums, an open-data portal for Division of Consumer Affairs datasets, and a requirements bill to collect data on regulated professions; business and professional groups expressed support and asked for clarifications on outsourced exam data.
The committee released a package of bills aimed at licensing reform and data transparency for the Division of Consumer Affairs.
Assembly Bill 33 89, as amended and released by the committee, would allow a majority of the members present at a professional licensing board, committee, or entity to constitute a quorum for reviewing licensure applications that do not require legal review, provided the stipulation is used only after a 90-day period in which the board cannot meet statutory quorum requirements. The amendment at the desk added a one-year sunset and requires the affected board, committee, or entity to submit a report to the Legislature about potential consolidation or merger partners.
Assembly Bill 33 90 would require the Division of Consumer Affairs to maintain an open-data portal with specified datasets (examination passage and failure rates, application processing times, consumer complaints) that comply with the Open Public Records Act and applicable privacy laws; an amendment clarified which examination data apply, removed an average complaint-response-days requirement, and changed the effective date to 18 months. Althea Ford, vice president of government affairs for the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, supported the bill but asked for clarification about whether examination pass/fail rates should be required on the portal when some boards outsource exam administration.
Assembly Bill 35 77 requires the Division of Consumer Affairs to collect information on professions and occupations it regulates — including numbers of outstanding initial applications and incomplete applications, and funding expended to retain employees — and to compile a report within six months of enactment. The bill also directs the attorney general or designee to develop training for staff who process applications and to review the feasibility of outsourcing certain intake and response functions.
Witness slips from a range of professional and business groups (including the New Jersey Society of Professional Land Surveyors, New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce, NJCPA, NJSFDA, NJAMFT, Leading Age New Jersey & Delaware and others) declared support; several groups indicated they did not need to testify. Althea Ford offered thanks for the committee’s prior special hearing on licensing pain points and described the bills as “common sense solutions.”
For each bill the committee made and seconded motions to release the measures, and roll calls recorded affirmative responses for the members listed in the transcript. The bills were released from committee for further legislative consideration.
Next steps: each released bill will proceed through the Legislature; the one-year sunset and the required reports noted in AB 33 89 and data-collection timelines in AB 35 77 will produce follow-up deliverables for the Legislature to review.
