Saturday, March 31, 2012

Illinois State Common Sense


I just successfully renewed my Permanent Employee Registration Card (PERC) with the state of Illinois. I have no disciplinary issues that get in the way.

The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation requires that anyone with a Permanent Employee Registration Card (PERC) be honest and truthful about their professional practices. One should answer truthfully that one is not delinquent on child support payments or defaulted on state education loans. Does this mean that one's license gets renewed if one truthfully says they are delinquent on child support or defaulted on state education loans. One might think so.

It makes common sense that if someone with a PERC was dishonest and stated on their application that they did not default on a state school loan or were not delinquent on their child support payments, they would be disciplined for dishonesty in some other way besides refusing to renew their PERC so they could go back to work earning the money necessary to continue paying off their school loan or catching up on delinquent child support payments, right?

Apparently not. Not only does the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation refuse renewal on PERCs for being dishonest, but the department refuses applicants the cards necessary to actually earn the money to make right that which was wrong, and on top of that, the refusal of PERCs cuts revenue to the state of Illinois by $45 per applicant. This compounds the economic loss in terms of tax revenues generated down the line.

While I was at the website I browsed around at some of the articles and found an interesting report on recent disciplinary actions against card carrying members.

http://www.idfpr.com/Forms/DISCPLN/1202_dis.pdf