I’d first like to wish all of you a Happy New Year. I hope you all had time to relax and enjoy the Holiday season.  The New Year always brings with it an opportunity to reflect on the past and make a commitment to address those areas in which we might fall short. It also brings with it a renewed sense of energy to honor that commitment and a desire to look at things with fresh eyes.  This New Year provides the opportunity for the agency to embrace these concepts as we complete the Agency’s Sunset review and start the 86^th Session of the Texas Legislature on January 8.

If you have had a chance to review the final Sunset report, you know that the Sunset staff took a hard look at inspector qualifying education and as a result of that review, the Sunset Commission has directed the Agency to work on simplifying Texas’ inspector education requirements. In particular, the Sunset Commission has instructed the Agency to streamline inspector pre-licensing education requirements to reduce redundancies and to ensure the content aligns with subject matters reflected in the inspector licensing exam. The Inspector Committee has already begun working towards that goal. The Education Subcommittee met in late December to begin a discussion of ways to implement this directive and to receive input from providers. The committee is meeting on January 16 to consider the best ways to accomplish this goal and will meet again on February 4. The Sunset recommendation is to have this process complete by January 1, 2020.  

The next meeting of the Inspector Committee is Monday, February 4. Remember, this is the meeting where inspectors are eligible to receive up to 2 hours of continuing education credit just for attending. The application deadline for seeking an appointment to the Inspector Committee has passed and the Interview Committee is in the process of reviewing the applications received with the hopes of providing recommendations for new members at the February 11 meeting of the Commission.

2019 looks to be a busy year and I look forward to all that can be accomplished by the Committee and the agency with your help. As always, thank you for the support you provide to the Committee in its ongoing role to protect and serve the people of Texas.