Thursday, August 17, representatives from AFCCA and AZ Capitol Consulting met with Tom Salow (Assistant Director of Licensing), Megan McMinn (Office Chief, Office of Special Licensing), Carly Fleege (Policy Advisor) and Natasha Culbertson at the AZDHS Bureau of Special Licensing.
Overall we thought the meeting went well.
For those who are not aware, Natasha Culbertson did transfer over to the Department. Marissa did as well, but has since left. So there are still people who know our profession at the department.
Tom, Carly and Megan fully acknowledged at how specialized our profession is and they were all appreciative of our proactiveness in being a resource as we transition.
Megan and Carly are currently doing a deep dive of SB1210 and identifying all the potential issues that will arise as part of regulation and operations.
The biggest of course being clearly defining “Pathway to Licensure” through Rules. Their goals are to have clean applications steps, eliminate unnecessary hurdles and continue to uphold the education standards we requested.
A few key points that are open for discussion:
- Elimination of the State Board Exam
- Turn Funeral Director, Embalmer and Creationist licenses to perpetual licenses. You would still be required to earn CEs and pay an annual fee, but the renewal process would be much simpler.
- Perform annual inspections
They would like to hold another stakeholder meeting to discuss rule making. Their goal is to turn in language edits by September 15.
Two things to also point out:
- The best phone number to reach Special Licensing is 602-364-2079. Several people are still calling the old phone tree which is no longer active. They are working to remove it out of google so that when people look for the Funeral Board that number will not populate.
- They also just updated and released the Arizona Consumers Guide with all updated information, and now it is digital! You do not have to purchase the brochures anymore and you can just forward a link to the PDF. Download the AZ Consumers Guide Here.
As we continue to transition into the Bureau of Special Licensing, please let us know of any issues that your firm has so that we can proactively work with the team to correct these issues.