Renewal and continuing education

Every other summer Rosa runs the same drill. In May she prints a list of every Yellowstone Bend employee's license, its expiration date and the continuing education hours each person has logged, and she posts it in the break room with a deadline circled in red: July 15. A Montana electrician who misses that date does not lose the license immediately, but the consequences grow quickly, and an electrician who works on an expired license is working without one. This lesson covers the renewal cycle, the continuing education rule, the lapsed, expired and terminated stages, audits and records, and working across state lines.

The renewal cycle

Montana electrician and electrical contractor licenses renew every two years. The board's renewal page gives the deadline as July 15 of even-numbered years for electricians and electrical contractors alike. The online renewal opens about 60 days before, in mid-May. The 2026 renewal ran from May 15 to July 15, 2026, and the board announced that renewal fees for that cycle were reduced by half. The next renewal will be due July 15, 2028. Renewal is done through the department's online licensing portal, which is available at any hour; the board's staff warn that waiting until the last evening can mean no help is available and late fees may apply.

Under MCA 37-1-141, the department sets the renewal date by rule and must give notice before it. The notice is sent to the address and email on file, which is why the 2025 law requiring licensees to report address changes within 30 days matters. A licensee who does not receive a notice is still responsible for renewing.

Lapsed, expired and terminated

MCA 37-1-141 sets three stages for a license that is not renewed on time. For the first 45 days after the renewal date, the license is lapsed. The licensee may renew by submitting the renewal, meeting the continuing education requirement and paying the late penalty fee with the renewal fee, and practicing during the lapsed period is not treated as practicing without a license. After 45 days and up to two years after the renewal date, the license is expired. The licensee may still renew on the same terms, but a licensee who practices on an expired license is considered to be practicing without one. More than two years after the renewal date, unless another statute or rule says otherwise, the license is terminated and cannot be reactivated; the person must apply for a new original license.

The board keeps disciplinary authority over a license for two years after it lapses, so letting a license lapse is not a way to avoid a complaint. And a contractor whose responsible electrician's license expires has a problem of its own, because its license rests on that person.

# License status on a given day (MCA 37-1-141; illustrative)
from datetime import date, timedelta
renewal_date = date(2026, 7, 15)
def status(today):
    if today <= renewal_date:
        return "active"
    if today <= renewal_date + timedelta(days=45):
        return "lapsed (renew with late penalty; practice not treated as unlicensed)"
    if today <= renewal_date.replace(year=renewal_date.year + 2):
        return "expired (renew with late penalty; practice is unlicensed)"
    return "terminated (new original license required)"
for d in [date(2026, 7, 1), date(2026, 8, 20), date(2026, 9, 10), date(2028, 8, 1)]:
    print(d, "->", status(d))

2026-07-01 -> active
2026-08-20 -> lapsed (renew with late penalty; practice not treated as unlicensed)
2026-09-10 -> expired (renew with late penalty; practice is unlicensed)
2028-08-01 -> terminated (new original license required)

Continuing education

ARM 24.141.2102 requires each licensee to complete 16 hours of continuing education during each renewal cycle, and at least 8 of the 16 hours must cover updates to the National Electrical Code. The board's FAQ describes the same requirement per year: eight hours for each year of the two-year cycle, with at least four of each year's hours on code updates, and says the hours may be earned at any time during the cycle. Other hours may cover subjects related to the industry. Basic electricity and apprentice-level courses earn no credit, because the rule is meant to keep licensed electricians current, not to repeat what they learned for the license.

Two groups are treated differently. A newly licensed graduate of an approved apprenticeship program is exempt from continuing education for the first renewal cycle. A licensee who moves from journeyman or residential to a higher license level, as Maren will, does not get that exemption. Maren will therefore need her 16 hours for the cycle that ends July 15, 2028, and the code update hours will be on the 2023 NEC that the state adopted in September 2026.

Approved courses and records

Only approved courses count. The department approves courses and assigns each an approval number. Instructors must be Montana-licensed journeyman or master electricians or have substantially equivalent credentials. Course providers must report participation so that it can be verified online within 30 days after the course. The board accepts courses approved in states with which Montana has a reciprocal agreement, or courses the department finds substantially equivalent, if the certificate shows the approval number, the date and the split of credit between code and industry hours. The board's 2025 rule notice also proposed letting instructors earn continuing education credit for preparing and teaching approved courses, within an annual cap.

Licensees must keep their completion certificates. Each certificate must show the licensee's name, the course title and date, and the credit hours broken down into code and industry content. The department may audit licensees at random at any time, and a licensee who certified completion at renewal but cannot produce certificates can be disciplined for the false certification as well as the missing hours. Rosa keeps a scanned copy of every employee's certificates in the company's files, but each electrician is responsible for his or her own.

Planning the hours

The simplest plan is to take the code update hours early in each cycle, when the new edition's changes matter most, and to add industry hours on topics that help the business: NFPA 70E, motor controls, solar and storage, estimating, or the Montana law topics in this course. A master who supervises others should take courses that help with supervision as well as installation. And because the hours can be earned at any time in the cycle, there is no reason to leave them for June of the renewal year, when every approved class in Billings is full.

Renewing the contractor license

The electrical contractor license renews on the same date as individual licenses. The renewal confirms that the business still has a responsible electrician, that its workers' compensation and unemployment insurance are in place, and that its owners and contact information are current. Because the contractor license rests on the responsible electrician, the company should renew Maren's master license first and its own license second, and should not let either slip into the lapsed period. A contractor whose license has expired may not buy permits, and the certified cities and the state bureau check license status when they issue them.

Rosa's renewal checklist has five lines for the company: the contractor renewal itself; a current certificate of workers' compensation coverage; confirmation that the unemployment insurance account is in good standing; an updated list of owners and officers if anything changed; and a check that the responsible electrician's own renewal is complete. She also checks the company's construction contractor status with the department and the Secretary of State annual report, which are separate filings with separate dates.

Changes to report between renewals

Renewal is not the only time the board needs to hear from a licensee. Address and email changes must be reported within 30 days under the 2025 service-of-process law. Changes in the answers to personal history questions, such as a new criminal conviction or discipline in another state, must be reported because the duty to update continues after licensure. For a contractor, a change of responsible electrician, ownership, business name or entity must be reported, and a change of entity usually needs a new license. Reporting promptly keeps the record accurate and avoids the appearance that a licensee hid something until renewal.

A short company calendar keeps all of this from depending on memory. Yellowstone Bend's shared calendar shows each license's expiration, each employee's continuing education target for the cycle, the policy renewal dates and the annual report date, with reminders sixty and thirty days ahead. The calendar costs nothing and has kept every license on the company's roster current for twelve years.

Working across state lines

A Montana license does not authorize work in other states, and other states' licenses do not authorize work in Montana. The board's published information has listed journeyman-level reciprocity with a group of states, including several neighbors, and Montana's 2025 changes added a substantial equivalency list under MCA 37-1-304 for applicants from states with comparable standards. There is no general reciprocity at the master level. An out-of-state licensee who needs to practice in Montana briefly for specific purposes, such as teaching a course, may use the department's 21-day temporary registration.

Yellowstone Bend sometimes works in northern Wyoming and western North Dakota. For those jobs, the company and its electricians hold the licenses those states require, and the responsible electrician arrangement in each state follows that state's law. A Montana master supervising work in Sheridan is not, by that fact, licensed in Wyoming.