I got an email this afternoon from David E. Brown, Executive Officer of the California Board for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors (BPELS), updating and correcting initial information on the surprise action by Calif. to eliminate the state Board of Registration for Geologists and Geophysicist. He forwarded a report from AEG (Assoc. of Engineering & Environmental Geologists) on their work to preserve the board, and drew my attention to the discussion on page 7 that corrected earlier comments that the BPELS would not meet with AEG until after the elimination was completed. Those comments were also referenced in a blog post I did on the news.
The report describes ongoing discussions with BPELS and noted that they were as surprised as anyone about the action. AEG is a leader in working through California's political leaders to fix the situation. [right, July 11, 2009 meeting of the Big Five (l-r): Assembly Minority Leader Sam Blakeslee (R), Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D), Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), Senate President pro tempore Darrell Steinberg (D), Senate Minority Leader Dennis Hollingsworth (R), and gubernatorial Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy. Credit AEG, via Wikipedia]
The report says BPELS is planning a town hall meeting hear concerns about the impact of the legislation. The next BPELS’ board meeting has been rescheduled for November 18 and 19 at the Mission Inn in Riverside, Calif.
The boards of registration for geologists in other states are raising concerns that California's action may create a domino effect, because as one board director said, if California with all of its geologic hazards doesn't see the need to register geologists, why should anyone else?
My thanks to David Brown for setting the record straight and passing along this information.