Rep. Severin Sponsors Successful Effort to Address Professional Licensing Delays
SPRINGFIELD – State Rep. Dave Severin (R-Benton) helped sponsor a successful legislative effort on the final day of the 2023 Veto Session that seeks to address delays and backlogs involving the granting of professional licenses at the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.
“My constituents are waiting up to 6 and 8 months just to get their professional licenses so they can go to work. It’s hurting our citizens, it’s keeping people from out of state from being able to work here, and the delays are contributing to workforce shortages across multiple industries,” Severin said. “IDFPR handles thousands of requests for professional licenses of all kinds from nurses, doctors, barbers, dentists, cosmetologists and many more. So, I decided to take action to address these delays. I am proud to have worked closely with my colleagues and with IDFPR to get them moving in the direction of issuing licenses within days rather than within months which is the case now.”
HB 2394 will extend currently licensed individuals’ licenses. It also accelerates the procurement process to allow the department to more rapidly obtain the electronic products it needs to bring the department up to today’s technological standards.
Last month, Governor Pritzker announced a leadership change was coming at IDFPR. Rep. Severin says he took the opportunity that a leadership change presented and suggested several changes to help speed up the process of issuing professional licenses to the current acting director.
“We’ve got workforce shortages here in Illinois in several sectors that are being caused by an antiquated system at IDFPR. The agency doesn’t at this time have adequate software systems to make this process work better,” Severin said. “HB 2394 allows the Director of IDFPR to extend the expiration date on professional licenses to help stop the backlog of renewals from getting bigger. The bill also allows the agency to skip over an arduous red-tape process to be able to obtain the software they need to upgrade their technology to help get licenses out the door quickly to the folks that need them.”
The House voted unanimously in support of HB 2394 on the final day of the Veto Session.
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