Government Affairs News

<div>We have recently been dealing with a new threat to the practice of landscape architecture. Attached is a Notice of Proposed Rule for 61G15-18.011, F.A.C., which purports to create a definition of "traffic engineering" that would restrict a huge list of tasks to only engineers. This rulemaking was directed at planners, but as you'll see, if affects landscape architects and others significantly as well. Also included in the attachments is FLASLA’s substantive comments on the draft, as well as our "Lower Cost Regulatory Alternative" which requires them to revise their "Statement of Estimated Regulatory Costs", which you'll see is quite deficient. FLASLA was able to get them to slow down on this rulemaking. We were told they were going to withdraw the draft rule, but they have not done so yet. Instead, they are convening committee meetings of the Traffic Engineering Rules Committee of the Florida Board of Professional Engineers. It is unclear whether and when this is coming back, but we are prepared to continue to fight it, up to and including a rule challenge if necessary. The engineers simply do not have the statutory authority to go into their own rules and restrict the scope of practice of other professions.