Inaugural Compact Commission Meeting set for October

On Aug. 4, 2022, Gov. John Carney signed Senate Bill 257 into law making Delaware the 17th state to enact the Interstate Counseling Compact. The 17 member states (Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia) will each appoint one delegate from their licensure board or agency to act on the foundational commission. The first commission meeting is set for Oct. 25 and 26, 2022. You can register for this meeting, or an informational Legislative Summit here. 

During the first meeting, the commission will begin to establish a governing structure to oversee the implementation of the Compact. The commission is tasked with developing the rules, establishing the budget, and choosing the database and location of the commission office. The Counseling Compact Commission is ultimately the governing body for the Compact with the basic parameters being:

• Each member state is entitled to exactly one delegate on the Commission selected by the state’s licensing board.
• The Commission can establish and maintain bylaws, rules, and a budget.
• The Commission must elect an executive committee composed of 11 voting members and four non-voting members from national professional counselor organizations.

NBCC has worked collaboratively with Nursing Licensure Compact (NLC) leadership to develop an opportunity to license the intellectual property utilized for the NLC database for the development of the Counseling Compact Commission’s database. Information regarding this opportunity has been shared with ACA. The Commission will consider a range of database options and management service possibilities, and NBCC hopes to have the opportunity to be considered as a partner to support the Commission’s work.

Once the initial governance structure and rules are put in place, which could take 6 to 12 months, participating states will be able to issue Compact privileges to individual counselors to practice within those 17 states (and eventually, others that follow in enacting the Compact). NBCC will be monitoring and actively advocating for future compact legislative efforts in the states.

The Compact is currently in effect only in states that have enacted the legislation. NBCC will be closely tracking the formation of the new Commission and expressing interest in serving as a non-voting member. You can read more about the Counseling Compact in our Grassroots Action Center, and we will keep you informed as this exciting development unfolds.