Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: Arms are headed.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Ways and hands. It's still Thursday, February 26 at eleven ish. And we are going to hear about h five eighty eight, which just came to us from house general. It is sort of the standard OPR housekeeping bill. Some of it we have jurisdiction over. Much of it we do not. We have OPR here. We have a fiscal note. We're going to do the section by section or summary until there's something that people need to see the statutory language on.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: Floor is yours.

[Tim Dublin (Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you very much, committee members, for having me. For the record, my name is Tim Dublin, Legislative Counsel. Indeed, you have, let's see before you, H588, the miscellaneous OPR bill. It's particularly draft 6.1, and I provide the committee with both the language of the bill and overview. Both should be available online, the committee's web page. I'll be working off the overview as Chittenden just indicated, and please let me know if you have any questions or if you'd like to dive into the particulars of the language at any point. I can switch documents. It's linked off. So I will just kind of rattle off machine gun style here, some of the areas this bill covers. It will be a wide array. So this bill proposes to explicitly enable the Office of Professional Regulation, or I'll just be referring to its shorthand acronym, OPR, my testimony today, to rescind licenses and instances of administrative error, nonpayment, and withdrawal from lapse of interstate compacts. Also, it will enable OPR to enforce against attempted fraudulent or deceptive procurement or use of a license, and this is just the attempt language of the actual conduct of Form. Fraud or deceptive procurement, sorry, in statute. It will require professional regulation board members to be adults. It will correct terminology for license denials of foreign applicants. So just kinda some of the change there. We'll create additional, let's see, combinations of education experience as prerequisites for accounting licensure. It will create a new form of licensure for dentists, particularly a limited academic dentist license. It will remove the requirement for advanced practice registered nurses, or APRNs, in their license renewal application to no longer have to include documentation of completion of the APRN prior to It will enable OPR to create temporary policies to supplement psychologists' licensure, in particular their educational requirements, that will be notwithstanding any contrary rules. It will eliminate the advisory committee on midwifery that reports to OPR as well as the Commissioner of health, and it will change the license renewal requirement for midwives to submit individual practice data to a discretionary decision to be made by the director. It will also modify the definition of the constitution practice funeral services to include disposition of human remains by cremation, alkaline hydrolysis or natural organic reduction. It will require OPR to report on the possible professional regulation of speech language pathology assistance. Right now, speech language pathologists themselves are earning license. And finally, it will require the registration of massage establishments to expand on operational requirements and unrelated professional conduct.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So I am personally sort of interested in what alkaline hydrolysis means, but I'm not going to ask you. And what I would like you to go deeper on is the dentist. Sure. I believe there might be a fee attached to that.

[Tim Dublin (Legislative Counsel)]: There is a $0.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Oh, I love that.

[Tim Dublin (Legislative Counsel)]: Essentially, it's just listed as 0 so that they're hopefully, that kind of head off any confusion as to there being no fee. So rather than just kind of not stating what the fee is in the statute, it's written in as $0, and that's gonna be in section 12 of the bill, which amends let's see, 26 BSA, section six sixty two, and fees, and that's in particular under Chapter 26 Professional Regulation, Chapter 12 for dentists, dental therapists, dental hygienists, and dental assistants. And then the more substantive changes having to do with creating the licensure, or that licensing credential, which be in a new section, which is not really TL fees at all.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And the massage therapist? Sure.

[Tim Dublin (Legislative Counsel)]: So let's get down to part nine of the bill, this is sections 18 through 19. So we have, it's kind of a long list of various amendments to the section statutes. And to orient us, we're in Title 26, again, for professional regulation in general. Chapter 105, particular to massage therapists, body workers, touch professionals. And as I will refer to them, I'll just be using the short handle, massage therapist, but when I say that, just know that it means massage therapists, body workers, and touch professionals. So we will have let's see I guess what is perhaps an issue on people's minds is whether there is a new fee here or not, and I'll give my 2¢ on it, and then I would encourage the committee to ask OPR for their opinion as well, just because they may clarify some of the points I made. There's no explicit new fee here. Let me just pull my notes quickly. So the way I kind of characterize it is that it sweeps more people into an existing fee, but it's not necessarily creating explicit new fee of its own. Let's see, chapter 105, where we are, regulates massage therapists. Requires all practitioners to register, which costs $90 This is under a cross reference to three VSA 125, particularly in subdivision B1M. That's just the enumeration of all the fees, or many of the fees that the OPRA collects charges, the various professions they regulate. And then, let's see, under para law, 26 BSA fifty four twenty three, each massage establishment must have a designated massage therapist to be responsible for suing compliance with the law. There's a presumption in the law that the designees register and pay the fee, and the same would be for all establishments owned and operated by a massage therapist already. Now what this bill does will require any and all persons who own or operate an establishment to register and as an attempt to create a penalty if there's noncompliance, of course. And under section fifty four twenty five, applicants and persons regulated under this chapter shall pay those fees set forth in the cross reference section, which again is $90 Establishments owned and operated by a massage therapist will not really be affected. Already paid the fee. They'll be affected the same, I guess I should say. However, if an establishment is not owned or operated by a massage therapist, that owner will now be required to pay that fee. And I know there's some nuance around this and some operational consideration or I should say, implementation, considerations that I think would probably be better answered by OPR. This is my reading of the law.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Questions? And we'll hear from OPR and joint fiscal.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe]: We're hearing from OPR. Are

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: there any other sections of the bill that folks want to go deeper with Tim on?

[Tim Dublin (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, the speech language pathologist. So the pathologists themselves will not be affected by this bill, but there will be a, regarding their assistance, there will be a sunrise review required by of OPR, form that is. OPR will be tasked with looking into and recommending a suggested level of credentialing for speech pathology assistance, whether that be lowest registration, medal certification, or highest, most involved, I guess, way to think about it, full licensure. And so, to regulate assistance in particular, OPR will be tasked with taking a look at that and reporting back to the legislature.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe]: Our Vice Chair brought this up, I'm going to ask this question. Maybe I'm dating myself by saying how long it's been around, but there's been tons of battles and concerns around speech language pathology because they sometimes serve independently of the education setting and they also serve in education settings where they also carry a relationship in education. And I just wondered if that has been part of this conversation at all for assistance. I don't know if

[Tim Dublin (Legislative Counsel)]: I could really speak with much knowledge on that.

[Rep. James Masland]: Would probably differ from here.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Anything else for Tim?

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: Yes. With the zero fee, where there's no nominal, no fee at all, but there's a

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: place for the fee. Is

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: there no cost or no work done here?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe]: I think that's a great question for OPR.

[Tim Dublin (Legislative Counsel)]: It's so different for OPR.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: All right, thank you. Any other sections anyone needs

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: to see? Thank you so much, Tim. Really appreciate it. Question. You folks want to go OPR then JFO or JFO

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: then OPR? OPR, please. OPR. Thank

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: you. Director Colin. So much, Jennifer Colin. The Director of the Office of Professional Regulation. Thanks for having us today. And I don't have prepared testimony, but I'm here and happy to answer y'all's questions about H588. And so in terms of the questions that were just asked, I could take the one about dental licenses first. So we were very excited to learn that there is going to be a satellite dental school campus that's opening in Vermont very soon. And we're all very excited because if you've tried to make an appointment at your dentist's office, good luck. We have such a shortage of dental hygienists and dentists, so we're thrilled that there's going to be this school opening in Vermont very soon. And so the faculty of that school will be folks who are also working in a dental clinic that's operated at the school, and those clinics or that clinic will be offering services at low or reduced cost to folks who need lower or reduced cost dental care. And that's a way to get people in school trained to be dentists under the supervision of licensed professions. So there will be a nominal amount of work that OPR has to do to process these applications, but we don't expect that there will be a significant volume there. And also, we just wanted it to We didn't want to put up another barrier with a fee for this credential, given the significant shortage that we have of dental practitioners. So don't think there will be a substantial impact on our work in terms of processing these applications.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: I respond that? Yeah. Of course. And I respect that and admire that decision, but remember that there's some cost. We've heard many times in my tenure here at State House that, especially since there has been no fee bill coming through the legislature, we don't have a chance to change the fees at all unless we go a different route, but there used to be an annual fee bill. When that is now not happening, the fees stay at full. So that means the fees have never covered the cost for you guys, never. But they have added to the revenue coming into your office to help offset whatever there is. So when you purposely don't set a fee, that means all the cost for the work you do to prepare that piece of paper she takes and puts up on her wall is something you have to absorb. We're gonna hear about that again in our office because we hear about it every year.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Yes. Representative Branagan, I will offer, and I think you make very good points about when there's no fee to start, I will In defense of the Secretary of State's office, they actually did bring us a fee bill two

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: years ago? Yes, they did.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: 2023, and we with full collaboration, and we passed it. And that was very exciting, and they've been doing that regularly with us.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: I remember. Dream about that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: It was all very helpful.

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: That's great. Yes. Okay. The other important thing to know is that OPR is currently undergoing a study of how our agency is funded because of the very point that you're making. Some of these professions, you know, we're a special fund agency, so we don't get a general appropriation. Some of these professions are operating in the black there's no issues. Others of the professions are operating in the red and are at a deficit because our funding model is from the 1970s and doesn't take into account the way we do professional regulation now. So this is a two year study that OPR is doing. All employees at OPR and Secretary of State's office are doing positive reporting, keeping track of their time so that we know how much each profession costs. And we have data on that. And we'll be coming back to the legislature with a report on what our findings are and what our recommendations are to change the way that we're funded.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: So what year are you bringing the report?

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: I believe we have one more year of data gathering, and then we'll be providing that report.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Can you tell me a lot more about the

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe]: massage therapist?

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Happy to do that. So OKRs done, I believe, a couple of reports on the regulation of massage therapists. And you'll recall back in 2018, there was a practitioner in Middlebury who had a voyeurism charge because they were recording unsuspecting clients in dressing rooms. And so that kind of squarely brought into OPR the question of should massage therapists be a regulated profession in the state of Vermont? We studied that. We did a sunrise report. And ultimately, we concluded that Well, let me back up a bit. So under Chapter 57 of Title 26, that's our sunrise provision. And we're only allowed to regulate professions when there's a risk to the public health, safety, and welfare by the unauthorized or unregulated practice of a profession. So we can't just regulate any old profession we want to. There has to be a risk of harm to the public. And so we studied that and determined there was a risk of harm to the public. And that risk of harm was by basically practitioners who would engage in sexual acts or conduct with clients. And so we felt that registration would be an adequate regulatory program, which means everybody who is engaged in the practice of massage therapy has to register with our office. They're not required to have training. They're not required to have any national certifications. If you're engaged in the practice, you have to register with us. And that gives us enforcement oversight, meaning that we get complaints from the public if some sexual touch or something has gone wrong, and those practitioners are subject to our unprofessional conduct statutes. So we can prosecute those folks and we can remove them from the marketplace. And I'll tell you, in this profession, we've had around 100 complaints since we began regulating massage therapists. And most of those, I would say, the vast majority of those have been around sexual misconduct. And so we've prosecuted quite a few folks, removed them from the marketplace, revoked their registration, which means they can no longer engage in the practice of massage in the state of Vermont. Okay? So we've been regulating individual massage therapists for a few years, and we do still have, in the state of Vermont, just like in every other state, the issue of illicit massage businesses. So these are businesses that are under the guise of massage, but really where human trafficking is taking place. Our office has engaged in investigations with state law enforcement and other federal and state partners to investigate these types of businesses, But it is happening in virtually, like, all of the bigger towns in Vermont, there are illicit massage businesses. And so we wanted one additional tool in the tool belt. This is not going to solve the problem, but it's a way for us to require Or let me back up. Registration of a massage establishment where it's more than just one person practicing, where it's multiple people engaged in the practice, will allow us to ensure that this is a registered business in the state of Vermont, meaning registered with the Secretary of State's Business Services Division, like it's a legitimate business, that we identify who is the actual owner of the business. And it also gives us more authority in terms of inspection or going into the business to determine if it's a legitimate business. And if it's not, we can yank that credential, we can revoke that establishment credential, and essentially shut the place down.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And so in a I just want to try to sort of what were you saying in same words to make sure I understand. Sure. So in a scenario where an establishment has many folks who provide massage coming in and out and maybe not the most permanent workforce, you have enforcement capacity that goes beyond the individual in terms of whoever might be hiring them or not hiring them.

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Correct. And it doesn't even We anticipate that shop owners won't necessarily or not shop establishment owners will not necessarily be individual registered massage therapists. They might just own the business and hire people to work in the business. So the goal is really to give us another tool in the tool belt to try to fight human trafficking.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: No, I know this is a public safety issue in my community, and I really appreciate you taking it on. Thank you. Yeah.

[Rep. James Masland]: Go back to Dennis for a bit, if you could.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: To where? To where? I just want to make sure I'm done with massage. Okay, I'm sorry. No, it's fine. Anyone else have anything on massage?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Just wondering, scale, I mean, we'll hear from JFO about the number of practices, but I'm wondering how many of the practices that exist now are not owned and operated by the massage therapists.

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: And we don't have data on that because the businesses aren't registered with us and there's no correlation between the owner of the business and We just don't have that data at the moment. I think we've got 1,200 registered massage therapists, and we found some information from Department of Labor. We estimate there are around 150 establishments. So whether those are owned or operated by a registered massage therapist, I mean, some will be and some won't be, but not a substantial number.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe]: Back to the dentists. Thank you, Representative Masland, for your patience.

[Rep. James Masland]: I had some questions and I don't know if you can answer them.

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: I will do my very best.

[Rep. James Masland]: I won't be disappointed if we try to find our way down a rabbit hole. Okay. I've been aware for some time that the DSU had been trying to set up a program for dental therapists and various kinds of dental work in the lab, and much of it seems to have come almost to naught, or, you know, halfway there, but not quite. And I wonder from your perspective if you have any information to share about that. My concern is, it was an attempt to create more professionals that didn't pan out, even though it caught a lot of money. Money was spent to build a lab and various other kinds of stuff. Does your officer have anything to add to that discussion?

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: I'm sure we would and had I been prepared for the dental therapy question, I could have come with that information, but I don't have it on hand. So, I'm happy to give you some, I can provide you with some more information.

[Rep. James Masland]: Anything you want to provide would be happy to do that. Thank you very much.

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: I'll do that. Great.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: If I could, this is a little outside this, but now that we have here, Director,

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: a question that came

[Unidentified Committee Member]: up the other day, and just Can you tell us who can ask for a sunrise?

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Oh, I'm so glad you asked that question. Oh, I'm so glad you asked that question. We love Chapter 57 of Title 26, because it really is our this is our public protection lens, and we're very passionate about our mandate of public protection. So there is an application process on our website where anybody can seek to request a Sunrise review from us. So it's not just the legislature. Anybody can do that. There are certain pieces of information and data that we require for people to give us when they're doing a Sunrise application,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: but anybody can ask for that. If the tax department wants a Sunrise study on something, would you like us to put that in statute, or do you just work that out

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: with the tax department? That is a great question. And this is something I think that we've probably heard about, which relates to real estate appraisers.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: You did?

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Yes. So we've had conversations with the tax department about that. And either way, either by application or legislative mandate, we don't have a preference. I suppose if it's Just thinking through it. You know, if it's a profession that we've never regulated before, something that we've been doing is requesting an appropriation with that request because those sunrise reports take us a lot of effort. And if there's not a profession that's already related to that report, then we have no funds really to do that with. For real estate appraisers. We do regulate real estate appraisers. So I wouldn't expect that we would have an appropriation request for that.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: Thanks for Are they licensed

[Unidentified Committee Member]: or are they certified or registered?

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: Licensed, I believe.

[Rep. James Masland]: Well, then, I guess, why

[Unidentified Committee Member]: would the tax president ask for us to do

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: It's a slightly different real estate appraiser and Oh,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I see.

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: That's right. So this is for town listers or folks in their appraisal department, I think, who are doing that. Cool.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: TAC should speak to most of this. Yes, okay. Again,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: what you said initially is anybody can file an application, but you don't necessarily always go down the road of a summarized review. You judge it based on that application whether or not you go further, correct?

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: I believe we do have authority to kind of decline to do further review if it appears that, you know, if you came to us with a request for something that impacted, like, people doing The the full year launch. Yes, exactly. Or, like, a minimum number of people would be impacted, and we could kind of tell from the outset that there was no public protection component of that, I believe we have the ability to decline.

[Rep. James Masland]: Okay, thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you so much, really. Oh, sorry. Yep.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe]: And this is really more just a request. Yes, ma'am. With respect to the speech language pathologist assistance, understand the intent and support all the work you've been doing to try to do public protection and also to professionalize our workforce where it's needed. But will that Sunrise report, will that include both looking at where those folks work what the implications of that, and also we'll look at financial implications, not just for the speech language pathologist assistance,

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: but also for your office and also for potentially the agency of education. Absolutely. So there is a provision in the Sunrise statutes that I think prohibits us from looking at specifically programs that exist at the agency of education already. So I believe that's in the very beginning of Chapter 57 of Title 26. However, we do have other professions where, you know, we provide kind of the base licensure and then AOE has additional requirements and requires the folks to get an AOE license as well.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe]: Is your intent to try to pull those over? Because that's what's happened in the past. Just as you are an enterprise fund, that would have left at the time a $400.350000 hole at the agency. And so I just, I encourage, the leg bone is always connected to the risk code or whatever, but just make sure, I hope you can make sure in your report that you're looking at unintended consequences of recommendations as well.

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: And to the extent that we're allowed to under Chapter 57, we will do that because we have to go through reviewing the money, reviewing the policy. We have to look at all different components of it. And that hasn't always happened.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe]: Yeah, thank you. Not from you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you very much. Thank you. I think we're going to hear from Mr. Leotard first, and then we'll hear from you, Chad.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Hello,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: welcome back to Ways and Means.

[Hercules Liatard (Massage Therapist/Business Owner)]: Thank you. Well, I'm, as I've said, I'm here to speak on the fees for the H588. My name is Hercules Liatard, I'm a massage therapist and massage therapist business owner and member of the Vermont Chapter of American Massage Therapy Association. Last year, I testified on fees relating to individual massage therapists, specific sorry, specifically that OPR is charging fees that are more appropriate for licensure while OPR is choosing only registration for massage therapists. May creates new regulations for massage therapy establishments and charges an additional fee for establishments, the same fee as for licensure. The individual massage therapist fees continue to be erroneous, and five eighty eight creates duplication for small businesses. Under five eighty eight, any business that offers massage, such as a spa, salon, doctor's office, chiropractor's office, etcetera, will be paying that fee. A larger business establishment may be able to compensate for that fee. However, five eighty eight does not take into account the burden on small businesses. Under five eighty eight to be considered as a massage establishment, the business would employ two or more massage therapists. I would like to step out make a note that it was mentioned earlier that the registration fee is $90 However, it is $90 in the beginning for a massage therapist when they first but it then goes up to $275 And that is every two years. An example, my wife and I are registered massage therapists here in Vermont. We have two we have to register every two years at a current registration fee of $275 Combined, that is $550 We have our own practice and we have a space we work out of, which is our establishment. With new, now proposed fee being present in H588, establishments will be required to pay $275 as well. This is unfair to a small business, especially those owned by massage therapists. Five eighty eight's larger establishment will be paying one time fee, only a one time fee, $2.75, while a smaller establishment, like our own, is paying three fees in actuality. A massage registration fee and a new establishment fee, we will have be paying us well, I'm sorry, will have us being combined, will have us being paying $825 combined. This is a hefty combination of fees for any small business massage establishment and especially in light of the fact that we are not licensed. I'd also like to say there was testimony about the complaints, and of those, was 102 have been 102 complaints since 2021 to OPR. 51 of those have been nonregistration free. And from our experience, I would like to point out nonregistration meaning that therapist is not registered. A lot of our feedback we are getting on our end is that the registers the therapists are not registering or have reregistered. Most of those may be reregistered, not showing the number, but may not be reregistering because of the fee of $275 which is, you know, quite hefty. So this is a big deterrent for a lot of reregistration. With that said, we would like to ask the committee to consider an amendment to five eighty eight relates to a fee example exemption for massage therapist owned small businesses where the massage therapist owner is already paying a fee. I'll be happy to answer any questions.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you. Any questions?

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: That's fine. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Hercules, just a question for you. Your business, is it a LLC? Is it a sole proprietorship so you file a Schedule C?

[Hercules Liatard (Massage Therapist/Business Owner)]: We're just a regular mom and pop practice. We practice our own establishment as a lot of massage therapists do.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay. So probably a schedule C with Okay. Only

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Thank you.

[Tim Dublin (Legislative Counsel)]: No prob.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: Were you wondering about their ability to write off the cost of the electricity? No.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I was just thinking about structure and also about the number of establishments that are owned by somebody other than a therapist.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you very much. Really appreciate you joining us again.

[Hercules Liatard (Massage Therapist/Business Owner)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Ted.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Okay. I'm going to share my screen just so it's behind. Oh, there it goes. Okay. There's not a huge amount of content in the fiscal note. I will be primarily speaking to everyone at the Joint Fiscal Office if I haven't already said that. About the main fiscal impact of the bill is the expansion of this massage establishments that would pay the OPR establishment fee of $100 at registration and $275 at renewal. OPR estimates that 150 establishments would be required to pay this fee as a result of H588, which would result in about $15,000 in revenue in fiscal year twenty seven with our new applications or registrations, and then $40,000 two years later when folks are renewing their licenses, and that would generate $40,000 in fiscal year twenty nine and every two years later. In the off year, there'll be some folks who would register off schedule and put them in even fiscal years, and you would see minimal revenue increases from that provision in those years. So that is the massage therapist establishment piece. There are a few other Can I ask questions?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Sure. Teddy, in your example, it does say in your line there, sole proprietors would be

[Tim Dublin (Legislative Counsel)]: exempt from this arrest. So

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Mr. Leotard, in that sense, would be exempt from paying the additional two seventy five dollars fee.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I believe in the scenario that Mr. Leotard described, their business is them and their partner. Both provide. But maybe they can be separate establishments, I don't really know.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yes, don't know the full extent of the weeds, but yes, good point that sole proprietorships are exempted from paying from this fee. For limited academic dentist licensure, we had $0. We want note that OPR indicated that six people may have bailed themselves at this fee. Some could be from out of state.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Do we have an interstate compact non dentist placement?

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: They're registered out of state, but they would come to be faculty in Vermont. So, they're not licensed as dentists currently in Vermont. And so yes, very minimal fee impact there. Do wanna note that the Sunrise assessments, there are definite costs for OPR to conduct these assessments. They're really going into the weeds, conducting a full evaluation of the profession. OPR did indicate that they have resources available in the already regulated speech language pathologist profession to use for the summaries assessment. So they're not going to be looking for additional resources to conduct that. And then finally, the bill does dissolve an advisory committee on midwifery, and they are entitled to per diem compensation, the maximum potential per diem compensation of $3,000 per year. But I understand OPR sees less than that as we typically see in per diem compensation. So that's the whole I

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: can't be in that last sentence that you just said. I heard the $3,000 Yes.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: When talking with OPR, they noted that they don't pay the full $3,000 in per diem compensation. Many times folks don't submit per diems if it's available to them, so it's certainly far less than $3,000 but we're fully in the dotting Is and crossing Ts portion of the fiscal note, so I wanted to give the full picture. Great.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: Any other questions for Ted? Thank

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: you much, Leigh.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Of course.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I have a question for Director Colon, if you don't mind. In those numbers you gave to Ted, do you have a sense of how many of the establishment that more than one registered therapists are owned by registered therapists?

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: I don't believe that we were able to parse exact data right now, just because we don't require registration of establishments at this point. So it's hard to have that data, and we're teasing the other from different sources. But we estimate that about half of our licensees, we have twelve sixty sorry, registrants, and we estimate approximately half of those are sole proprietors, so they would not be required to pay an establishment fee. And then a substantial portion of the remaining 600 will be people who work in what will be registered establishments. So you think of a place like the Stove Lake where there are multiple practitioners there and you're going to have a resort that's having to get the establishment registration, you don't have exact numbers.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Did you contemplate the suggested amendment at all, in thinking about exempting folks who are already paying the registration fee from the fee for registering the statute.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe]: I'm sorry, that was

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: the first that I've heard

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: of it. And so I would really

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: need to talk to our team and our data and policy person about the financial implications of that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Okay, would you mind doing that and telling us about it tomorrow?

[Jennifer Colin (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: I will do my best.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Okay, thank you. Cool, appreciate that, thank you. Anyone else have anything else? Okay, thank you all, and I'll see you at 01:15.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan]: Yep, you have to go down this tomorrow.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I hope so. I don't want any

[Unidentified Committee Member]: It's very

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe]: over four. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Just

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: if we can make this work, that's great. And if we

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe]: can't fully load, keep our