I want to bring to your attention major changes in the regulatory posture of the State of Arizona, and how this fresh breeze of regulatory reform affects you as real estate licensees. In the past, many regulatory agencies had their own administrative law judges and conducted their own administrative hearings. Clearly, under the OAH, the individual agencies have no authority, directly or indirectly, over the law judge who hears the agencies' cases. By creating a pool of administrative law judges, no one agency is without representation due to case load.
Cross training appears to be the rule and is working well.
A newly mandated function for regulatory agencies is that of definite time frames for the issuance of licenses. A license, by definition, includes just about every kind for formal issuance and approval that the Department controls. This includes salesperson's and broker's licenses, subdivision public reports, Commissioner's waivers and special orders of exemption. The new mandate requires state agencies to have rules in place establishing the time frames for license issuance by December 31, 1998. We think the implementation of time frames not only produces some reasonable assurance to applicants as to when and how their applications will be processed, but is also designed to reward excellence in submissions.