A Senate committee on Monday released a bill, supported by NJBIA, that aims to improve the turnaround time for the professional licenses people need to enter the workforce by creating a public online portal showing application numbers, processing delays, and other datasets.
“People shouldn’t have to wait, six, seven, eight months, to get even a notice about where their license (application) is, where it stands,” said Senator Joe Lagana (D-38), the sponsor of the bill S-4581 and chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which voted 5-0 to release the bill.
The state Division of Consumer Affairs currently oversees more than 750,000 licensed professionals and approximately 60,000 registered businesses, Lagana said. Lengthy delays in processing license applications are hurting the business community.
In her testimony, NJBIA Vice President Althea D. Ford thanked Lagana and Assemblyman Sterley Stanley (D-18), the Chairman of the Assembly Regulated Professions Committee who has sponsored an identical bill in the lower house, for their efforts to bring greater transparency to the challenges many professionals and businesses are having obtaining licenses. These processing backlogs also prevent job creators from filling key positions and ultimately stifle economic growth in New Jersey, she said.
“We appreciate your championing of efforts to increase transparency within the operations of the Division of Consumer Affairs by providing access to data, such as the number of applications under review by the division, processing times, response times for complaints and the like,” Ford told the committee.
“We know that this data is already being collected, and so allowing for it to be public will allow for the information to better inform the state's workforce development pipeline challenges and opportunities and also inform steps that can be taken to alleviate backlogs,” Ford said.
Specifically, the bill would require the Division of Consumer Affairs to create a public portal that includes information such as the number of license applications received, average processing times, active licenses by county, examination pass rates, and complaint resolution data.
The Assembly version of the bill, A-5624, was advanced by the Assembly Regulated Professions Committee in May.
