Polis’ vetoes encourage Dems to show government restraint
Gov. Jared Polis fired a shot across the bow of the Colorado General Assembly in recent days on an issue likely to surface multiple times during his years in office. Just how many occupations truly need a government license to protect the public?
By vetoing three bills — licensing sports agents, genetic counselors, and HOA managers — the Democratic governor signaled to the Democratic legislature that he’s going to demand a high burden of proof for new license requirements, and even for the extension of some existing ones. And he offered good arguments for government restraint.
In the case of genetic counselors, for example, Polis pointed out that even the state Office of Policy, Research and Regulatory Reform concluded in 2017 that “licensure is not necessary.”
Its report is revealing. Regulatory staff could not locate a single consumer complaint regarding genetic counselors to various state health and medical boards.
And they were able to identify “only three cases that demonstrate clear evidence of harm from the practice of genetic counseling throughout the United States over a 20-year period” — and none in Colorado.
Moreover, as the governor’s veto message noted, “of the 115 genetic counselors currently practicing in Colorado, at least 98 percent are privately certified” by the American Board of Genetic Counselors.
Meanwhile, Colorado actually licensed sports agents in 2008 but repealed the statute in 2010 while leaving criminal penalties in place. So guess how many agents have been charged under those penalties in the past decade? According to legislative council staff, the answer is zero. So we have a fix for a non-existent problem.
Polis’ veto of the HOA bill was more surprising since it involved a program that regulatory staff advocated extending. But the governor said the bill ignored suggested revisions to the program, adding that the licensing rule “has not had the intended effect of reducing harm to the consumer.”
Even those who disagree with Polis on the HOA veto should be willing to concede that government licensing of occupations can have unintended consequences that should be balanced with expected benefits.
As Polis explained, “Occupational licensing is not always superior to other forms of consumer protection. Too often it is used to protect existing professionals within an occupation against competition from newcomers entering that occupation.
Meanwhile, according to the 2019 Current Population Survey, 24 percent of the national workforce is licensed, up from below 5 percent in the 1950s. Licensing in the United States over the years has at times prevented minorities and the economically disadvantaged from having the ability to access occupations.
When the supply of professionals is restricted, the cost of services increases and the poorest among us lose the ability to access those services.”
His stance on occupational licensing is unusual for a liberal politician but hardly unique. The Obama administration in 2015 authored a document that offered a framework for policymakers to minimize “barriers to labor market entry or labor mobility” — noting, among other downsides, that “licensing constitutes a significant barrier to relocation” across state lines.
Perhaps the most surprising line in the White House document: “most research does not find that licensing improves quality or public health and safety.”
Even if that statement is true, almost no one advocates dispensing with licensing involving serious health and safety (and, in some cases, economic) concerns. The list of more than 125 licensed occupations and industries on the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies’ website includes many that the vast majority of Coloradans would agree belong on the list. But there are others — such as athletic trainers — that are head-scratchers. What is the overriding health, safety or public interest that private certification can’t provide?
Admittedly, Colorado is by no means a big offender among states for gratuitous licensing. In 2012, the libertarian-leaning Institute for Justice in Washington, D.C., found Colorado had one of the least restrictive licensing policies among states for lower-income occupations. But that’s a ranking that should be preserved.
The Institute for Justice has released other reports over the years on occupational licensing, documenting how in many cases they are “created in response to lobbying by those already at work in an occupation” in order to lock in status rather than as a response to consumer complaints. Meanwhile, education requirements frequently “bear little relationship to public health or safety.” For example, “on average, it takes 11 times as much training to become a licensed cosmetologist as it does to become a licensed emergency medical technician.”
In his veto letters, Polis said he wasn’t categorically ruling out adding new licensing requirements, but only when there are “compelling consumer safety and economic reasons.” Let’s hope he means it.