The Florida Senate

455.2281  Unlicensed activities; fees; disposition.--In order to protect the public and to ensure a consumer-oriented department, it is the intent of the Legislature that vigorous enforcement of regulation for all professional activities is a state priority. All enforcement costs should be covered by professions regulated by the department. Therefore, the department shall impose, upon initial licensure and each renewal thereof, a special fee of $5 per licensee. Such fee shall be in addition to all other fees collected from each licensee and shall fund efforts to combat unlicensed activity. Any profession regulated by the department which offers services that are not subject to regulation when provided by an unlicensed person may use funds in its unlicensed activity account to inform the public of such situation. The board with concurrence of the department, or the department when there is no board, may earmark $5 of the current licensure fee for this purpose, if such board, or profession regulated by the department, is not in a deficit and has a reasonable cash balance. A board or profession regulated by the department may authorize the transfer of funds from the operating fund account to the unlicensed activity account of that profession if the operating fund account is not in a deficit and has a reasonable cash balance. The department shall make direct charges to this fund by profession and shall not allocate indirect overhead. The department shall seek board advice regarding enforcement methods and strategies prior to expenditure of funds; however, the department may, without board advice, allocate funds to cover the costs of continuing education compliance monitoring under s. 455.2177 The department shall directly credit, by profession, revenues received from the department's efforts to enforce licensure provisions. The department shall include all financial and statistical data resulting from unlicensed activity enforcement and from continuing education compliance monitoring as separate categories in the quarterly management report provided for in s. 455.219 The department shall not charge the account of any profession for the costs incurred on behalf of any other profession. For an unlicensed activity account, a balance which remains at the end of a renewal cycle may, with concurrence of the applicable board and the department, be transferred to the operating fund account of that profession.

History.--s. 27, ch. 92-149; s. 12, ch. 94-119; s. 160, ch. 99-251; s. 2, ch. 2001-269; s. 5, ch. 2004-292.