In the latest setback for the integrity of licensure and the protection of professions, some states are ‘streamlining’ their boards of regulation by consolidating them in order to… what, gain efficiency, harvest surplus registration fees back into the general fund, further concentrate political power and authority? We should think about this for a minute.
In one sunny coastal state, Geology was found to be so similar to Engineering and Land Surveying, that the regulation boards were combined and integrated. Other than a clumsier acronym, (BPELSG), I fail to see what was gained. That board must balance potential violations by surveyors and engineers that could result in real harm to the public, with “Don’t lick the red rocks, they’re poisonous….”
Now another state, next door to the aforesaid coastal paradise, is entertaining legislation to combine Surveying, Engineering, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Interior Design, Environmental Health, and Teeth Whitening into a single board of regulation. Okay, I made part of that up – nobody believes landscape architects belong in that group.
The point is, across the nation, our Surveying and Engineering boards of regulation generally pay for themselves from licensing fees and operate reasonably efficiently. They could be, and deserve to be, left alone to police the professions and protect the public. But twenty years ago, or maybe even longer, people, or not maybe ‘people’ exactly, but legislators, started noticing that bureaucracy had exploded into a thousand kinds of regulations and licensing boards. Want to cut hair? You need a license. Want to paint fingernails? You need a license. Want to decorate someone’s interior? You need a license, and so on, ad nauseum. That Lemonade Stand Licensing Board is positively Fascist!
For a long list of reasons, there developed backlash against all this regulation, and that’s good. There is certainly too much regulation, too many licenses, and too many boards, and that’s in every state. The one recurring circumstance that seemed to build like a wave, is used as the poster child for trimming regulations, was how unfair it was when Corporal Everyman was transferred from Fort Hippopotamus in Missouri, where his spouse had a business offering eyebrow lacing, to Fort Macaroni in Arizona, where she could not lace eyebrows without an expensive and difficult to obtain license. They wrote to their representatives and …Senator Blowhard was incensed! Why, this nonsense has to stop! And so, the great licensing reevaluation began.
Never has a baby so big, been thrown out with the bathwater, as with these attacks on professional licensing, both blatant, as in the Institute for Justice’s constant court challenges, and subtle, as in the legislative efforts in “consolidating of regulation boards.” Look, let me make this simple, Senator Blowhard and Governor Pompous Pants: a bad haircut grows out, (unless it doesn’t in which case you can call Edward M. Permstein, Haircut Attorney), so lose that licensing board right now. No one needs a license to paint fingernails. My 3 three old granddaughter painted my toes last winter, and she did just fine. Is that a violation of some sort? I told her don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time, but she just kept painting. (I hope that stuff comes off pretty soon.)
In a moment of seriousness, let me just wrap this up by pointing out that Surveyors and Engineers practice in ways that could harm public safety and well-being. Therefore, that particular licensing board is of critical value, and should not be watered down by mating it up with the Lawn Mowing commission and the Circus Clown Regulation Board.