Nevada Alliance of Massage Professionals (NAMP)

Issues

• Election of Officers
• MBLEx Policy
• Sex Offender case
• New Committee appointed
• California Massage Schools

Election

• Billie Shea remains Chair of the Board
• Michelle Viesselman remains Vice Chair
• Robin Graber replaces Joe Cracraft as Secretary/Treasurer

This election raises a question whether there is a conflict of interest for Billie Shea. Billie has been elected as the President of the Nevada Chapter of AMTA. She reported that the National office of AMTA does not consider this a conflict. She also presented the question to the Ethics Commission of Nevada and reported they found no conflict of interest.

Members of the NAMP board were contacted by a member of AMTA who expressed great concern feeling this is a conflict. From our view point we believe that Billie should be put on notice that it is her responsibility to be very careful to avoid supporting AMTA concerns from her seat as Chair of NSBMT.

MBLEx Issue

New license applicants who have taken the MBLEx exam must apply to NSBMT for a portfolio review which results in a delay of about 3 months in receipt of their license. Keith Marcher from the Attorney General’s office reported that it would be legal for the Board to accept the MBLEx exam. Billie Shea reported that she does not have a question about the quality of this test. She said “We need to understand how it works.”

We observed that all three applicants at the 6/11/10 meeting were accepted without discussion. In our view this is an issue that needs to be followed. We believe this is not a reasonable policy for NSBMT to follow.  The Board has been discussing this test for more than a year and last April MBLEx representatives came and clearly explained the test.

Sex Offender Case

This was a case that raised several important issues. First, there is no provision in NRS to deny a massage license to a Registered Sex Offender. The NRS puts a 10 year limit on criminal offences, so if the incident that placed some one on the Sex Offender list is more than 10 years old, it cannot be considered as grounds for denying a Massage License. The fact that people can be placed on the List for non-predatory activity also came out in the discussion.

California Schools

The California School issue has now been focused on a short list of schools that are being investigated by the California Commission on Post Secondary Education. A new committee has been formed to review applicants from “The List” of California schools. The Committee members are: Michelle Viesselman, Michael Smith & Kathleen Pilgreen. We will watch the activities of this committee.

CEH Policy

We still need a transparent and consistent policy on Continuing Education Hours. We continue to see inconsistency in decisions from one case to another. There seem to be problems with University and Community College courses, and at this meeting there was discussion about denying a course from a Massage School because it was “core curriculim.”

Check the Minutes

The minutes for this meeting have been posted. We encourage you to check them for yourself.

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