You might sleep safer knowing the state of Texas is now requiring all 11,498 registered architects to be fingerprinted and undergo a background check. The Texas Legislature in its wisdom passed HB 1717 in the 2013 session mandating the change starting Jan. 1 this year.
Texas is the only state that requires architects to undergo such scrutiny. It also happens to be the state with the fifth highest prison population and the seventh largest number of convicted sex offenders, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice. Obviously, architects are not the problem, but…no fingerprints in the DPS database means no license or license renewal.
Given the laid back, creative profile of most architects I know, it seems odd to subject this group to a procedure usually reserved for people getting booked into jail or seeking a national security clearance. In truth, teachers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, engineers and many other licensed professionals in Texas have been subjected to mandatory fingerprinting for some years.
Architects finally joined the pool when a Sunset Commission review of the Texas Board of Architectural Examiners (TBAE) discovered they had been overlooked.
The program’s primary intent, it seems, it to make sure sex offenders and other convicted felons do not gain access to school campuses and other locations where their work might bring them into contact with children. Access to people’s homes, financial accounts, and other concerns also came into play. As someone who just visited an elementary and junior school in the San Antonio Independent School District Thursday and who has not been fingerprinted as a working journalist in Texas, the state law and policy seems arbitrary and highly selective.
For better or worse — or both — society is continuing to find ways to marginalize people with criminal records, especially sex offenders. High rates of recidivism make such individuals unsympathetic figures in the public eye, and elected officeholders respond accordingly. No one wants a sex offender driving the school bus.
Still, for a convicted felon who has served his (or her) time and been released, it is getting harder and harder to find a neighborhood to live in or an employer willing to hire them. Such constraints undoubtedly contribute to so many people failing to gain productive re-entry into society.
“A lot of architects at last year’s state convention complained about the policy after we were briefed,” said Lowell Tacker, a principal with OCO Architects and the former president of the San Antonio chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “People felt it was one more invasion of their privacy, but who wants to go on the record opposing it and then be accused of not caring if child molesters get on campus?”
Tacker said the feedback on the new law from members of the architectural community ranged from “negative to super-negative to super-super-negative.”
Some Texas architects complained about the new fingerprinting policy for an entirely different reason: they already were fingerprinted when they underwent background checks to obtain a concealed handgun permit. Architects pack hidden handguns? Who knew? The FBI does not provide state agencies with fingerprint records for their independent use and storage, so pistol-packing architects had to get fingerprinted like everyone else.
“There is such a thing as a right-wing or conservative architect, you realize,” Tacker quipped before assuring me he wasn’t armed.
The architects I surveyed were uniformly upset with the new law, and keenly aware of the inconsistencies in the state’s arguments for fingerprinting licensed professionals, while leaving the majority of the working population untouched.
“Please understand — and believe — that your TxA advocates did everything possible to suggest that architects are the professional that least need to be fingerprinted — if they need to be fingerprinted at all,” Texas Society of Architects’ Senior Advocate David Lancaster wrote in a posting to members last year. You can read some of the comments made by his dues-paying members on the Texas Society of Architects blog.
A few weeks into the process, Lancaster said the process has gone well, despite the unhappiness with the new law. More than 300 architects were fingerprinted at the state convention in Fort Worth in November.
“Before Christmas, we were up to nearly 2500 architects who registered even before the Jan.1 start, ” said Glenn Garry, TBAE communications director.
For the nearly 4,000 Texas-registered architects who live and work in another state, they, too, will have to be fingerprinted when they file for their license renewals.
As I started contacting firms about the change in December, I imagined long lines of architects, small sketch pads and pencils in hand, winding around the Texas Capitol, waiting to be fingerprinted after the holidays. But that’s not how it works. Like everything else, the work is outsourced to a private contractor, in this case Morpho Trust USA, a subsidiary of a French company Saffron. Presumably, these workers at a foreign-owned company have been carefully vetted and fingerprinted before allowing them direct contact with our Texas architects.
Follow Robert Rivard on Twitter @rivardreport or on Facebook.
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I taught in elementary school for three years and never once heard of administration soliciting students to interact with architects on any project at the elementary, middle school, or high school level. Nor did I see many architects wondering the halls of the school or around the campus grounds. I’m struggling to understand the problem, or potential problem, the legislature was trying to solve. What happens if an architect’s background check comes up with a conviction-does the firm employing the architect have to notify a school district that one of their architects who will be working on the project, on campus grounds, has a record? That is reasonable if the record is related to sex offender crimes. Has there been problems with architects and school children or anyone else in the past? If the goal is to prevent potential problems for Texans, are architects the most pressing potential problem?
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This is nothing less than a violation of my civil rights and I am seriously considering not renewing my license this summer when it comes due. I do have a license in another state so I will still be a licensed architect. As a licensed architect in the State of Texas I have not once designed or worked on a school project nor am I likely to ever work on such a project. In fact, architects who do work on school projects for most ISD’s already have to get background checks so what does this law accomplish?
The most offensive thing about this law is that I can buy an AK-47 without a finger print DPS background check or in some cases without any sort of check. And architects are the danger to society?
It seems to me that 11,498 people should have refused. How did the Texas Society of Architects – https://texasarchitects.org/ address the issue? Do you have the Bill #? I want to see if my legislators voted for this. If they did I will take a few minutes to notify them of my disapproval and ask for an explanation of their rationale and ask for data that showed the law was needed. If I get a response I’ll share it here. I encourage others to contact their legislators.
http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/find-your-representative/
P.S. I’m not an architect.
There is the issue that the State Board fingerprinting will not count in other, job related fingerprintings, such as Federal level Security positions. I have been fingerprinted now 3 times in 5 years. If I then work for the school districts, fingerprinted again. The error is that the group of 11,000 plus (see number above) must be fingerprinted to find one possible criminal.
I am an architect working as a sole proprietor primarily on residential projects and not likely to submit proposals for school jobs. The fingerprinting requirement for architects is just wrong. But having lived in Texas for over 55 years, I’m not surprised as I have been noticing the backwards march in time with regard to our legislative brain trust in Austin in the past twenty or so years. It’s exasperating and embarrassing at the same time. I found out about this requirement from a notice that was sent out to all architects registered in Texas from the Texas Board of Architectural Examiners last year. I don’t recall the subject coming up for discussion or any opportunity to lobby our representatives on the issue during the last legislative session. It just seemed to happen and we will just have to take the time and money to get fingerprinted. I hope this is the extent of it and that something else crazy like DNA testing or digital monitoring or vehicle tracking is not just around the corner. Thanks, Robert for assuring the general public that they are now better protected from the likes of us architects.
Bob, thanks for keeping up the attention on this. As a licensed architect, I am opposed to this for the same reasons mentioned above and a few more. For one, we have to certify, under penalty of perjury, when we renew our license each year, that we haven’t committed a felony, or we lose our license.
Secondly, Architects are generally idealistic and disciplined people, who don’t go into the profession to get rich. So, the attraction to someone who is a felon and is practicing illegally would be slight, as there are easier ways to make more money impersonating a professional (doctor, lawyer, financial advisor, banker, etc.). Architects rarely work with children or have the potential to cause private, personal bodily harm on the scale of a doctor or nurse, minister or social worker. We just try to ensure people get out of buildings safely in emergencies and that our buildings stay standing long enough for that.
But most importantly, I read an engineer’s blog earlier this year, and a commenter revealed that Idento-Go by Morpho Trust, is part of L-1 Identity Solutions, but FORMERLY L-1 was Integrated Biometrics Technology . Integrated Biometrics Technology had issues with employees being convicted for stealing the identities of teachers who were being fingerprinted. (See links below).
My husband (also an architect) and I have been victims of identity theft in the past and the thought of our licensing board exposing us by contracting with such a company to take our info is chilling.
I went last week to be fingerprinted and IdentoGo / Morpho Trust’s space, was as “sketchy” and “fly-by- night” as they come. Like a temporary ticket seller who sets up shop in a hotel meeting room. IdentoGo by Morpho Trust could pack up and be gone in an hour, and change their name for the fifth time. So good luck finding them, if your identity is compromised. The name itself, “Morpho Trust” is an oxymoron! How can you trust something that morphs?
Here is the Engineer’s Board link and the links the engineer found:
http://engineerboards.com/index.php?showtopic=21764
http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/Four_Local_Women_Indicted_In_Identity_Theft_Scheme_112032149.html
http://findbiometrics.com/archive/integrated-biometric-technology-an-l-1-identity-solutions-company-intends-to-create-new-employment-opportunities-nationwide-for-us-war-veterans/
L-1 Identity Solutions is Morpho Trust, is IdentoGo…
It would be interesting if you could investigate whether the Senator and Representative shown on the link are stakeholders, or know someone who is?
Well said, Melissa. As an architect myself, I couldn’t agree more. The Additional info regarding Morpho Trust is extremely troubling and needs further investigation.