I believe that increasing the requirements for references, and instituting a time frame places an unreasonable requirement on applicants.

Civil engineers make up a large majority of both examinees and licensees.  From my experience and what I've seen on message boards, engineers, who are anything other than Civil Engineers, have a hard time finding any PE references to begin with. 

With the new Computer Engineering examination and licence, it will be nearly impossible for Computer Engineers to find any references. 

Do references have any legal liability of the referred person's failures?  No, they don't. I propose to eliminate requirements of PE references completely, and optionally, replace them with a background check. 

-130 and -220 do not specify any legal reason for providing references other than to "demonstrate the applicants competence and integrity".  Competence requirements should be met by the degree, passing of the FE, passing the PE, and integrity by a background check.

At a miniumum, I believe that Engineers and Architects should be able to be references for each other, in particular since the work often overlaps, and legally, each one can do a portion of the others work.