Advocacy-Political Action Updates

2019 Legislature Session

The 2019 legislation session is over. We would like to thank Abigail J. St. Lawrence, Attorney at Law, in representing us, our bill HB 270, and for her tireless, robust energy, frequent phone calls, early morning/late night texts, and weekly Sunday night meetings through out the session. We appreciate all that you did for us!

Click here for the 2019 Bills that MSHA was actively involved: https://static.wixstatic.com/ugd/60899b_57ce2e2b5e2b492f98bc1c88fa87acff.pdf

MSHA Advocacy Day

Executive council members held a luncheon on February 2, 2019 in the Capitol rotunda for over 200 state legislatures and provided education on what SLPs and AuDs do for our state and consumers!  What a great day it was!

Montana Legislature

HB 270, the MSHA sponsored bill to provide licensing standards for speech and audiology assistants, was tabled in the House Business and Labor Committee on 2/8/19.  Passage of the bill will be delayed until the 2021 session when the ASHA certification examination will be available.

From Lucy Richard, State Licensing Board Executive Officer: 

What does this mean for licensed speech-language pathologists and audiologists who supervise aides?

"Assistants will not become licensed after this session and the registration process for unlicensed aides will continue as it has the past several years. Aide registration will open on September 1, 2019, and end on October 31, 2019. Any licensee supervising an aide(s) during that time period must register the aide(s) by no later than October 31, 2019. This also means that the board's most recent updates to its aide supervision rules will remain as they were last updated on 11/17/18. Those updates include the ability for supervisors to "telesupervise" aides using asynchronous and synchronous methods (see ARM Title 24, chapter 222, subchapter 7 for rules pertaining to aides)”.

To check current bill drafts, please visit: http://laws.leg.mt.gov/legprd/law0203w$.startup?P_SESS=20171