BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Kevin de Le�n, Chair
AB 1758 (Patterson) - Healing arts: initial license fees:
proration.
Amended: August 4, 2014 Policy Vote: B&P 8-0
Urgency: No Mandate: No
Hearing Date: August 4, 2014
Consultant: Brendan McCarthy
This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill Summary: AB 1758 would require several licensing boards and
committees within the Department of Consumer Affairs to prorate
initial license fees on a monthly basis and would authorize
those boards and committees to impose an additional fee to cover
the costs of issuing an initial license.
Fiscal Impact:
Minor administrative costs to revise regulations and update
forms and procedures for collecting initial license fees by
several boards and committees within the Department of
Consumer Affairs (various special funds).
One-time costs of about $140,000 for information technology
upgrades to the computer system used to process license
applications (various special funds).
Ongoing revenue loss of about $900,000 per year in reduced
licensing fees (various special funds). The following boards
and committees would experience reduced license fee
revenues: Architects Board ($16,000), Dental Hygiene
Committee ($19,000), Medical Board ($686,000), Physical
Therapy Board ($29,000), Board of Psychology ($75,000),
Speech-Language Pathology, Audiology and Hearing Aid
Dispensers Board ($400), Veterinary Medical Board ($76,000).
Background: Under current law, various boards and committees
within the Department of Consumer Affairs license certain
professionals and enforce educational and profession standards
for those professions. In general, applicants for licensure pay
an initial license fee upon application and pay a fee upon
renewal of a license. Professional licenses are typically valid
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for two years.
Licensing boards and committees typically experience a large
number of applications for initial licensure based on academic
schedules. For example, most applicants for an initial license
will apply for licensure soon after undergraduate or graduate
training programs are completed and/or accredited professional
examinations have taken place. Thus, licensing boards and
commissions must typically process most of their applications
for initial licensure at the same time every year. To avoid the
same influx of applications for license renewal, licensing
boards and committee's often require licensees to renew their
license during the licensee's birth month, rather than on the
anniversary of the initial licensure. This is done to spread out
the workload for license renewal across the calendar year.
Proposed Law: AB 1758 would require several licensing boards and
committees within the Department of Consumer Affairs to prorate
initial license fees on a monthly basis and would authorize
those boards and committees to impose an additional fee to cover
the costs of issuing an initial license.
Specifically, the bill would require the following boards and
committees to prorate initial license fees:
The Dental Board of California;
The Dental Hygiene Committee of California;
The Medical Board of California;
The Speech-Language Pathology, Audiology and Hearing Aid
Dispensers Board;
The Occupational Therapy Board of California;
The Physical Therapy Board of California;
The California Board of Psychology;
The California Veterinary Medicine Board;
The California Acupuncture Board;
The California Architecture Board.
Related Legislation: SB 1416 (Block, Statutes of 2014) increases
the fee for an initial license and the biennial renewal of a
license to practice dentistry to $525.
Staff Comments: Typically, licensing fees charged by Department
of Consumer affairs boards and committees are either explicitly
set in statute or statute provides for the maximum fee that a
board or committee may charge. In cases where the license fee is
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set at or near the maximum statutory fee, a board or committee
impacted by this bill may not be able to raise fees on all
license applicants to offset the revenue reduction required by
this bill. As noted above, for several boards and committees,
the revenue reduction is expected to be minor and can likely be
absorbed by the board or committee. However, certain boards
which are at or near their statutory maximum fee levels will not
be able to absorb the revenue losses or increase fees on other
applicants to offset the reductions in this bill. In those
cases, the affected board or committee will have to reduce
expenditures for license review and/or enforcement activities.
In particular, the Medical Board is will experience a reduction
in fee revenues that cannot be recovered by increasing overall
licensing fees. Under current law, the annual license fee for a
physician is capped at $790 and the Medical Board currently
charges $783. Increasing the annual licensing fee to the
statutory cap is projected to raise only about $14,000 per year
(in comparison to the projected revenue loss of $686,000).