1-1     By:  Moncrief                                          S.B. No. 524
 1-2           (In the Senate - Filed February 16, 1999; February 17, 1999,
 1-3     read first time and referred to Committee on Health Services;
 1-4     March 17, 1999, reported favorably by the following vote:  Yeas 3,
 1-5     Nays 0; March 17, 1999, sent to printer.)
 1-6                            A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
 1-7                                   AN ACT
 1-8     relating to the public disclosure of certain disciplinary actions
 1-9     of the State Board of Dental Examiners.
1-10           BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
1-11           SECTION 1.  Section 2, Article 4550, Revised Statutes, is
1-12     amended to read as follows:
1-13           Sec. 2.  All of the records and files of the State Board of
1-14     Dental Examiners shall be public records and open to inspection at
1-15     reasonable times, except the investigation files and records which
1-16     shall be confidential and shall be divulged only to persons so
1-17     investigated upon completion of said investigation.  It is not a
1-18     violation of this section for the Board to share investigation
1-19     files and records with another state regulatory agency or federal
1-20     law enforcement agency during the course of a joint investigation
1-21     or in determining the feasibility of conducting an investigation.
1-22     The exception from public disclosure of investigation files and
1-23     records provided by this section does not apply to the disclosure
1-24     of a disciplinary action of the Board, including:
1-25                 (1)  the revocation or suspension of a license;
1-26                 (2)  the imposition of a fine on a license holder;
1-27                 (3)  the placement on probation with conditions of a
1-28     license holder whose license has been suspended;
1-29                 (4)  the reprimand of a license holder; or
1-30                 (5)  the issuance of a warning letter to a license
1-31     holder.
1-32           SECTION 2.  The importance of this legislation and the
1-33     crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
1-34     emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
1-35     constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
1-36     days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended,
1-37     and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its
1-38     passage, and it is so enacted.
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