I am the GIS Administrator for Warren County and I work in the county's Planning Department.

In January, I was contacted by an investigator from the New York State Education Department's Office of Professional Discipline. 

They had received a complaint from a surveyor stating that I was surveying without a license.

I was using a Trimble Pathfinder Pro XR GPS unit to collect fire hydrant locations and then plot them on a reference map.

Two investigators met with myself, our planning director, and our county attorney. The investigators were unfamiliar with GPS and GIS and were basically on a fact-finding mission. The investigation has progressed, and today we met with the two investigators, an attorney from the Office for Professional Discipline and a surveyor from the New York State Board of Licensed Engineers and Land Surveyors. 

The state's attorney told us at the beginning of the meeting that after reviewing the facts in the case, they do feel that we are guilty of practicing surveying without a license. She then gave our county attorney a chance to state our case, which I thought he did very well. We were informed that the board will make a decision within the next week. The outcome of today's meeting basically boils down to two issues:

1) Were we practicing surveying illegally in this particular instance
(collecting fire hydrant locations in North Creek)? If we are found
guilty, we will be either asked to stop, or asked to stop and then referred to the Attorney General's office for prosecution. This is where the involvement of the Office of Professional Discipline ends.

2) Is any GIS or other person using a GPS unit to collect locational
information to create maps for public use guilty of land surveying? This is obviously the larger issue, and the surveyors are ready to take us to task on this one. Their Board is meeting next week and will discuss this issue. I don't know if the surveyor present was representative of the entire board, but he definitely believes that only licensed surveyors should be using GPS to collect information such as we are (utilities, signs, etc) and implied that his board is ready to introduce legislation in the State Assembly to that effect.

We await the decision, and as we are deciding how to proceeed, 
I'd be interested to get some feedback from all of you.

Sara Frankenfeld
GIS Administrator
Warren County Planning Department
1340 State Route 9
Lake George, NY 12845
(518) 761-6410
frankenfelds@co.warren.ny.us

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