updates on rule hearings for DOL & DOH

The Department of Licensing will be the department that is in charge of our licensing as of July 2010. The Department of Health will not. They still have a say in how we do business though as they are in charge of public health. Because of the new laws the DOH re-wrote it's rules so that they would be in sync with the DOL rules. They are communicating through this process even though they are separate departments. If you have licensing questions direct them to the Department of Licensing not the Department of Health.

The rule hearing for the Department of Health was on May 3rd 2010. We had speeches prepared but turned down the option when they informed us that they where going to go ahead with the rules as written since there was no one there in opposition. The reason that we where all in favor of the new rules is that Patti Rathbun of DOH had attended almost all of the Department of Licensing Advisory board meetings and durring those meetings had shared with us the rules as they where being written. Patti took every piece of advise that we gave her under advisement and made compromises where she could. We went through the new rules word for word and she worked with us to make rules that are acceptable for body artists that we can live with and that will not be too expensive to follow. (I say "too expensive to follow" because the Seattle rules state that there has to be a sink available to every artist without so much as a curtain or door separating it from the work station. Because of the set up in some studios there was no room for such a sink so they would have to move locations making it such a huge expense it could put them out of business.) The new DOH rules are simple, easy to follow and most of us have been following them already or at least we should be.
The Department of Licensing rule hearing is on June 8th at 9:30 am at the Washington Department of Licensing in Olympia. These are rules that we also went through word for word at the advisory board meetings. We debated and compromised to get a good set of rules that follow the new laws that will go into affect in July of 2010. They are simple and easy to follow. I will post an update about the hearing when I get more information about it.