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SB 2357

A BILL for an Act to provide for a legislative management study regarding the feasibility, benefits, and challenges of creating a composite mental health licensing board.

69th Legislative Assembly (2025-26) Introduced by Michelle Axtman and 5 co-sponsors

Directs a 2025–26 interim study to evaluate a single composite mental health licensing board for multiple professions, assess benefits, costs, implementation, and report findings.

Second reading, failed to pass, yeas 8 nays 84
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Bill Summary · SB 2357

Summary — SB 2357 (North Dakota)

Title: A BILL for an Act to provide for a legislative management study regarding the feasibility, benefits, and challenges of creating a composite mental health licensing board

Purpose / Intent

SB 2357 would have directed the Legislative Management to study, during the 2025‑26 interim, whether creating a single, “composite” mental health licensing board to oversee multiple mental‑health professions is feasible and advisable. The study’s aim was to identify potential benefits, costs, risks, and implementation issues associated with consolidating existing independent licensing boards.

Key provisions

  • Establishes a Legislative Management study (2025–26 interim) on creating a composite mental health licensing board.
  • Required study components (explicit):
    a. Evaluate impact of a composite board overseeing licensing, regulation, and discipline for psychologists, social workers, addiction counselors, professional counselors, and marriage & family therapists.
    b. Consider adding peer‑support certification and peer participation in the composite board.
    c. Analyze regulatory efficiencies from consolidating multiple independent boards.
    d. Consider fiscal impacts: administrative consolidation, fee structure changes, and operational efficiencies.
    e. Analyze effects on licensing requirements, professional standards, and disciplinary processes (including how oversight could be maintained or improved).
    f. Consider views of affected professionals, board members, industry associations, and the public.
    g. Consider effects on participation in licensure compacts, multistate practice agreements, and workforce mobility.
    h. Consider impact on availability of qualified mental health professionals and public access to care.
    i. Review best practices from other states with similar composite licensing boards.
  • Reporting requirement: Legislative Management must report findings and any implementing legislation to the Seventieth Legislative Assembly.

Who would be affected

  • Licensed mental‑health professionals in North Dakota (psychologists, social workers, addiction counselors, professional counselors, marriage & family therapists), as well as peer‑support specialists if added.
  • Existing independent licensing boards and their staff.
  • Consumers of mental‑health services and employers (health systems, clinics).
  • State government fiscal and administrative units that support licensing and board functions.

Procedural / timeline aspects and current status

  • Introduced: March 12, 2025. Primary ND sponsors included Senators Roers, Axtman, Wobbema and Representatives Richter, Louser, O’Brien (committee materials show these sponsors).
  • The engrossed version (first engrossment) was a study bill with the items summarized above. Committee materials also included a far more comprehensive draft that would have created chapter 43‑56 and amended/repealed many existing North Dakota Century Code provisions to actually establish a composite board — indicating the idea was considered in both study and direct‑consolidation forms at different points in the process.
  • Final recorded action: Second reading — failed to pass (yeas 8, nays 84) on 2025‑03‑28 (did not advance). As of that vote, the bill did not move forward.

Potential impacts (if enacted)

  • Possible administrative efficiencies and centralized oversight, but also transitional costs and disruption for existing boards and licensees.
  • Potential changes in fee structure, disciplinary procedures, and licensing criteria.
  • Possible effects on interstate practice (compacts) and workforce mobility depending on the composite board’s rules.
  • Impacts on public access to mental‑health care depend on whether consolidation streamlines licensure and increases workforce flexibility or causes short‑term delays during transition.

Note: Bill materials include multiple draft/committee versions. The first‑engrossed text was a study direction; other committee documents reflect alternate, more expansive consolidation proposals that would have rewritten multiple code sections.

Compiled from official sources — confirm details with the bill’s official record.

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