Iowa State Electrical Examining Board Meeting Minutes Board Members Present: Randy Van Voorst Chad Layland Valynda Akin Barbara Mentzer Chad Chairperson Campion, Chairperson Andrea Rivera-Harrison Duane Quirk Rod Van Wart Lori Mease Jim Kenkel Board Members Absent: Skip Perley Staff Attending: Joe Brooks, Executive Secretary W. Stuart Crine, Building Code Commissioner/Interim Board Executive Secretary Coveyou, Agency Rules Administrator Scott Galenbeck, Assistant Attorney General Brian Bishop, Design/Construction Engineer Rhonda Clark, Secretary Chairperson Chad Chairperson Campion called the meeting to order at 10:00 a.m. Chairperson Campion opened the floor to Mike Coveyou, Agency Rules Administrator, to address House File 2700, the Standings Bill. Section 45 requires the Board to issue a license equivalent to a Class A license for a Journeyman or Master who have taken a supervised written exam not approved by the Board. The Governor announced at his press conference yesterday that he is going to line item veto that section. Section 46, deals with utility subcontractors that would exempt them from licensing as long as the work they are doing is within the public service obligations of the utility. Example: installing utility lines and working on substations, not wiring an office building or somebody s house. This language exempts subcontractors from licensing only in those cases. An employee of the utility is always exempt from licensing no matter what kind of work they are doing. So an employee of a utility who is wiring somebody s house is exempt. Chairperson Campion opened the floor to Executive Secretary Joe Brooks who provided the following information: Staffing update: Dana Bossow has been hired on fulltime and will start Friday, May 16, 2008.
Page 2 of 7 Ms. Alvarez turned in a letter stating she is no longer interested in the position as she has moved out of the state. Cindy Meyerdirk has been offered employment contingent on a background investigation. A modification to the PDQ (Position Description Questionnaire) on the Chief Electrical Inspector was made to require a certified electrician inspector. The Completed PDQ s for inspectors will be sent personal. Revenue: As of May 14, 2008, the total revenue for license fees is $1,303,345. Received a total of 8,214 applications for license. Executive Secretary Brooks will have total dollar figure by next meeting as to how much the Electrical Examining Board owes the State Fire Marshal Office by the end of this fiscal year. Office Space: Request has been placed for an additional 200 square feet due to additional file cabinets. Electrician license: Completed the first page of the application on 8,214 applications, so the acknowledgement letter could be sent out. Applications A through L have been completely inputted. Made a checklist to put in front of each file indicating what is missing if anything on applications A through H, which is approximately 3,000 applications, and from that 3,000, 1,504 applications are complete, and 1,496 that are not ready. It was asked if we are sending anything out to those applicants letting them know that their application is complete. Interim Board Executive Secretary Stuart Crine replied no, nothings being sent to these individuals and then Executive Secretary Brooks commented we will not send out anything other than the acknowledgement letter until we have gone through every file and have a complete interpretation of who needs what, so we are not doing duplicate mailings. Interim Board Executive Secretary Crine also reminded the Board that they advised the staff before not to mail out anything until we know the status on all applications. Chad Layland asked about the card printer. Interim Board Executive Secretary Crine stated that we were about to order the card printer when the card vendor, CI3, said that because we want holograms on the access cards, the contract vendor could not supply those. So we found a new vendor, but they are not on state contract. Due to state requirements, this must be sent out to bid. Jim Kenkel stated once we find a vendor that will be able to provide the cards, we will make every attempt to get them a state contract vendor so we will not have to go through this again. Continuing Education/Instructor: Made up an acknowledgement letter regarding receipt and approval of application, and we will keep this on file. The instructor will also be responsible for filling out the class roster that
Page 3 of 7 corresponds with the course taught. Once the class roster is complete, the instructor will send back the roster to us. We will then keep track of the class roster so that we can verify that the information provided by the instructor matches information provided by the people who took the class. At approximately 10:20 a.m., Chairperson Campion opened the floor to public comment. Executive Secretary Brooks introduced Cindy Houlson, who is the new manager of the Plumbing & Mechanical Board. Cindy stated that their first Board Meeting will be July 02, 2008, held in this same conference room. Cindy did invite everyone if they were interested to see how their first meeting goes. John Phillips of Marshalltown, Iowa. John asked if somebody applied to the Board and asked for a Class A based on taking a written supervised exam, and if they did not complete the Class B affidavit, will they be asked to complete that part? Interim Board Executive Secretary Crine replied that yes we would send them something saying here is what your file is missing and here is what your options are. You can either complete your file to try and go for Class A or you can complete your file as a Class B. Mike McLaughlin of Northwest Iowa Community College. Mike wanted to know if the Board had any proposed wording of rules written for how a two year degree will count towards credit on a Department of Labor approved apprenticeship program. Chairperson Campion replied that committee has met and we will get that report later today. Scott Abbott of Northwest Iowa Community College. Scott asked about instructor qualifications. It states you need 3 letters of verification for your qualifications. Scott wanted to know how extensive does the information need to be, do you need teaching certificates, or just educational background and experience as instructing. Chairperson Campion replied that in our area we have instructors that are okayed through the city that they have been teaching electricians that have been licensed, and I have told our people if you get a letter from the city that says we ve been acknowledging their continuing education, or any supervisor, a trained director etc. Some times we might have to take it case by case if somebody is teaching in an area where they have limited resources. Scott asked possibly like a maintenance supervisor that he has trained some of their maintenance people or safety directory. Chairperson Campion replied yes. Scott asked how far ahead of time do you need course approval to the time the course is going to take place. Executive Secretary Brooks stated there is not set time, just a reasonable amount of time, like around a week. At approximately 10:24 p.m., Chairperson Campion opened the floor to sub-committees. Discussion occurred regarding Prometric and state sponsored testing. It was brought up if the Board had determined what the last day the state would accept Prometric tests sponsored by political sub-divisions other than the states test.
Page 4 of 7 Motion made by Randy Van Voorst to adopt October 01, 2008, as our cutoff date on locally sponsored Prometric exams, seconded by Duane Quirk. Further discussion continued. Motion was passed unanimously. RFP subcommittee. Executive Secretary Brooks stated we do have a date set up for the software meeting for the RFP, on May 28, 2008, to determine if the license software the state is already using is compatible to what we are needing. If that is approved we will go to a June 12, 2008, meeting and it will be finalized. Chairperson Campion opened the floor to Mike regarding rules. Mike proposed a draft of changes that should be considered to be adopted emergency. Mike indicated that several meetings need to be scheduled in the near future regarding inspection rules and any changes that are needed that don t require emergency rule making. Mike has not started a schedule of hearings and the next set of public hearings will be over the ICN. Will probably schedule one hearing when the Board meeting meets and a second hearing sometime that same week late in the afternoon. Mike reminded the Board that the inspection rules need to be effective January 01, 2009. Chairperson Campion opened the floor to the Education subcommittee. Chad responded that he, Lori Mease, and Barb Mentzer have been working on sending a letter to community colleges for request of information. Chad stated the committee has spent sometime looking at the requirements/rules that other states have right now, Nebraska and Minnesota. The committee saw some things that Minnesota was doing that the committee thought would be appropriate and helpful to get our plan put together, and that we would match one of our neighbor s policy in terms of what they do for a two year trade school type program. The committee has not really come up with the specifics on what they were going to recommend to the Board. Chairperson Campion asked the committee to come up with something to recommend to the Board before the next meeting and email it out to everybody before hand so they would have time to review it ahead of time. Chairperson Campion stated he thinks the Board needs to talk about what the exam subcommittee talked about at their last meeting. Rod Van Wart stated that after the emergency boarding meeting himself, Randy, Barb, and Chairperson Campion had the opportunity to discuss some of the issues with the understanding that whether the Governor vetoed our request or did not, that we had to have some type of solution as to what was going on with regard to the Class A and Class B issue, and the review of these exams. Rod presented to the Board for discussion a solution to the issues that the Board faces. Anybody that is currently a Class B, that was grandfathered in under an old exam, could be elevated to a Class A, after two code cycles and showing that they have continued education units from those two code cycles. At that point in time the Class B person can say yes I ve done all this, I would like to be elevated to an A status. Much discussion continued. Mike suggested that the Board consider proposing legislation next year that would allow the Board to establish a class of license that would be good for working anywhere in the State of Iowa, but would not be good for reciprocity with other states that requires testing and experience
Page 5 of 7 of qualifications set by the Board. Mike suggests the Board to pass a resolution that encourages or urges political sub-divisions that restrict the use of Class B s, not to restrict the ability of electrician s who are licensed Class B electrician s with the state, and who previously held a license recognized by that political sub-divisions from working in that sub-division they were licensed in previously. Lori made a motion to adopt a resolution that the electrical examining board urges political sub-divisions which passed local ordinances restricting the use of Class B licenses to allow the Class B licensees, who previously held local licenses recognized by those political sub-divisions, to continue working within the political sub-divisions; seconded by Randy. Motion passed unanimously. Mike made another suggestion regarding the resolution; Executive Secretary Brooks could issue a letter to the political sub-divisions. At approximately 11:50 a.m., meeting adjourned for lunch. At approximately 12:45 p.m., the meeting reconvened. Chairperson Campion turned the floor over to Mike regarding policy issues. Mike drafted changes to the rules. Mike went through the changes with the Board. Discussion was made regarding the changes as well as discussion regarding bond and insurance. After much discussion regarding the bond and insurance, Mike asked the Board if they wanted to strike that language from the emergency rule making and add it back in with the inspection rules. Chairperson Campion asked everyone if they were okay with that, everyone replied yes. Mike went on to talk about the passage of Senate File 2428, which is the known as the state bad debt collection act. The state has 476 million dollars in court debt. One of the provisions of that is that Department of Revenue is going to create a data base of all the folks that are delinquent, which we will check upon issuing a license. Further explanation continued by Mike and Scott Galenbeck, Assistant Attorney General. Mike also wanted to mention that during the subcommittee meeting, House File 2547, there is language now on apprenticeships that essentially there are standards to be established by the Board. Basically the subcommittee said rather than trying to figure out what the Board would like in this regard, they asked me to bring that issue to you. Mike thinks we cannot worry too much about doing that in the emergency rule making, but does need to be figured out. Mike suggested passing a motion approving the adoption of the emergency rules effective June 01, 2008, with the changes discussed during the meeting. Rod so moved the motion, and Andrea Rivera-Harrison seconded the motion. Chairperson Campion asked if any further discussion. Val Akin asked about page 11, the apprentice fee, should it be $20 instead of $25. Everyone agreed it should be $20. This will be changed. Motion passed unanimously. Chairperson Campion opened the floor to other business. Chairperson Campion stated the City of Spirit Lake would like to end their electrical inspection program. We by statute have the
Page 6 of 7 ability to allow them to do that. Chairperson Campion stated in his opinion they are small enough to where he doesn t think if the state took over when we are ready to inspect that it would be that much more work on the state. Discussion continued. After much discussion, Scott thinks it is a good idea to respond to the letter and say that we have no authority to release you from the obligation as of right now, and we can also say that it s our understanding that they have a duty to continue to perform, and cite this code language. Rod so moved the aforementioned motion, and seconded by Lori. Motion passed unanimously. Chairperson Campion opened the floor to discuss and accept the minutes from April 17, 2008, meeting, and May 05, 2008, meeting. Duane made a motion to approve the April 17, 2008, meeting minutes, Rivera-Harrison seconded, motion carried unanimously. Chairperson Campion asked for approval of the May 05, 2008, meeting minutes. A couple of changes were brought to the table for discussion. With no further discussion or corrections, Barb made a motion to accept the amended meeting minutes, seconded by Val, motion carried unanimously. Chairperson Campion wanted to go back to continuing education on the agenda regarding date to stop grandfathering CEU classes. Executive Secretary Brooks stated from the first of the year until what date do we want to give people credit for courses that have been taken that would normally meet the guidelines. Discussion continued. Chairperson Campion suggested giving the applicants a deadline date of October 1, 2008, to make application for continuing education. We can approve classes from January 01, 2008 until October 01, 2008, without them having made prior application for that course being approved. Rod wanted to go on record that those people who are providing continuing education, in whatever form it was, that even if it may have been recognized by other entities other then this Board that doesn t mean they are going to get automatic approval by this Board when it comes before the Board. Barb made a motion to have October 01, 2008, the last date you can apply for approval for a course held between January 01, 2008, and October 01, 2008, and also is the last date that classes held after that date shall have to be preapproved. Seconded by Chad, motion passed unanimously. Chairperson Campion stated that a long time ago the Board had Interim Board Executive Secretary Crine reserve two spots for the Multi State Reciprocity Group Meeting. The Board needs to decide who to send. Chairperson Campion recommend that Executive Secretary Brooks to go and whoever else. Barb, Rod, and Chad all volunteered. It was decided that the three aforementioned Board members were to draw a card, and the person with the highest number drawn would go. After the drawing, it was then decided that Barb and Executive Secretary Brooks would go to the Multi State Reciprocity Group Meeting in Alaska.
Page 7 of 7 Much discussion was made regarding licenses. Executive Secretary Brooks offered to send out to the Board a roster of applicants showing who is ready for a license and who is not. Interim Board Executive Secretary Crine suggested that because we will not have the machine before the next board meeting, the staff could continue to get as many done as they can and report to the Board at the next meeting and let the Board know about how many applications are ready for licenses to be issued, how many we have that has a discrepancy, and how many we have not completed. It was stated that a date was set at the last meeting that by October 01, 2008, all applications had to be complete. Everyone agreed. Rod made a motion to adjourn the meeting at approximately 2:20 p.m., seconded by Rivera-Harrison; the motion passed unanimously. Respectively Submitted, Rhonda Clark Secretary II