Digging wasn’t easy for licensing task force
IT’S often said government is out of control and unaccountable to the public. A new report from the Occupational Licensing Task Force gives that complaint validity.
The task force was created to research state occupational licensing in Oklahoma and ensure it’s designed to truly protect the public rather than reduce industry competition. Excessive licensure regulation has been criticized on the political left and right for reducing economic opportunity for low-income people via unnecessary, unreasonable and expensive training requirements.
The task force made some progress, and notably offers guidelines for future licensure decisions. But its report also highlights the obstinacy of many government regulatory entities.
The task force report said “the lack of data on occupational licensing in Oklahoma” represented a significant challenge because there was no central listing of state occupational licenses. And the state’s licensing entities weren’t eager to provide that information.
When the governor conducted a survey through her Cabinet secretaries, “many agencies were not very responsive.” When additional requests for licensing data were included as part of the Budget Works Program for agency budgets, task force members were “disappointed with the quality and quantity of data that was received.”
Because “there was no current centralized authority which compelled disclosure of the relevant data,” the state Office of Management and Enterprise Services had to “independently reach out and request all pertinent data from every individual authority, board, or commission, which manages each occupational license.”
In response, OMES was “sometimes flooded with information beyond that which was needed and would have to later sift through data only relevant to occupational licensing.” In other instances, agencies were “either not being forthcoming with information, or only reporting partial components of requested data.”
“This limited candor in data reporting has made it difficult to fully understand the impact of occupational licensing on certain industries,” the report states.
If government officials can’t obtain such information, what chance does the average citizen have? The task force notes the lack of transparency not only impacts policymakers’ ability to make informed decisions, but “makes it difficult for the public to comply with, or understand the consequences of compliance with, the requirements themselves.”
In part to increase state licensing transparency, the task force recommends maintaining a state database and that licensing requirements be set to automatically expire after a set number of years unless legislatively reauthorized. The group also endorses centralizing oversight of state licensure in one agency, and dedicating a legislative committee to licensure review.
The report notes many licensure boards are dominated by industry players. This makes some sense since those officials have related expertise, but it also raises the chance for insiders to restrict competition and increase their profits.
The fact that officials at many of those boards and commissions reportedly did much to thwart review efforts does nothing to diminish that concern, and much to justify public skepticism of licensing advocates’ true motives.