Skip to main content

Lack of Action from Oklahoma’s Occupational Licensing Advisory Commission

Apparently, if you’re a legislator in Oklahoma and want to look like you’re doing something about an issue while not actually doing anything at all, you pass a bill to create a commission to study the issue. At least, that’s how the Oklahoma Occupational Licensing Advisory Commission (LAC) has operated so far.

According to a study I did while at the Goldwater Institute, Oklahoma ranked as the 24th most-licensed state. A study by the Institute for Justice ranked Oklahoma 35th in how broadly and onerous its licensing laws are. But these, and similar studies, are really just counts of how many occupations states license, so they leave out a lot of nuance.

The Institute for Justice’s report does add some nuance, reporting that by its standard of measure, Oklahoma ranks 18th in how burdensome are its licensing laws. That is an important piece of information. On the one hand, according to the Institute for Justice, Oklahoma’s licensing laws cover fewer occupations than in many states, but on the other hand, those laws are so egregious that Oklahoma still ranks worse than 32 states in how burdensome its licensing laws are.

And that is exactly what six different analysts at the 1889 Institute have found again and again. We have looked at eleven licensed occupations in Oklahoma, and in nearly every case, we have found that in some respect, Oklahoma’s licensing laws impose the most onerous requirements among the states. For example, Oklahoma is one of only a few states requiring a social worker to have a college degree, even as the state struggles to fill social worker positions. Not only is Oklahoma one of only 15 states that licenses locksmiths, it is the only state that requires locksmiths to be 21 years old. Ours is the only state that requires an electrologist to have a college degree. No state requires more education of funeral directors and embalmers than Oklahoma, though some require less. Colorado does not license them at all.

Yet, in this year’s LAC recommendations, no changes were recommended to Oklahoma’s social worker licensing laws and only alarm salesperson licensing was recommended to be eliminated from the state’s locksmith licensing law. We criticized hair braider licensing in Oklahoma’s cosmetology licensing law; its elimination was the only recommendation from LAC with respect to barber and cosmetology licensing. Yet, of the eleven licensed occupations we have reviewed, none of these licensing laws have been found necessary according to the rubric we have established, one not unlike that which LAC uses. Nonetheless, LAC has not recommended getting rid of any of them.

In fact, at the most recent meeting of LAC, the chair, Labor Commissioner Leslie Osborn seemed more interested in placing more requirements on cosmetologists than doing anything to free markets and expand opportunity. And speaking of opportunity, LAC members had none when it came to establishing a rapport with members of the general public who testified, due to some bad advice about how the state’s open meetings law works. That bad advice, that a commission member having a public conversation with someone testifying on-topic was not allowed, was given by, you guessed it, a licensed attorney.

Byron Schlomach is Director of the 1889 Institute and can be reached at bschlomach@1889institute.org.


Popular posts from this blog

COVID-1984: Have Americans Become Too Complacent in Our Liberties?

Alongside the coronavirus, another pandemic is gripping our country, one that we will feel the consequences of long after we reach herd immunity. I dub this pandemic COVID-1984, and I fear it will rot the roots of the Tree of Liberty. The consequence will be a government emboldened by a passive citizenry. One of the most surprising aspects of our current situation is how willing people have been to report their fellow citizens to authorities for the most minor and meaningless offenses. I used to wonder how people in authoritarian countries like Stalinist Russia and Maoist China went along with those cruel regimes. It turns out a tiny bit of fear is all you need to be a successful dictator. And now it’s all the easier to report your neighbors for reading alone on the beach with tip lines.   Even as governors and judges begin to lift stay at home orders, mayors are extending them. A county judge issued a temporary restraining order against Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s sta...
Read more

Can Government Force You to Close Your Business?

1889 Institute takes no position on whether any or all of these measures are warranted or necessary, or whether their economic fallout would inflict more human suffering than they prevent. We are simply evaluating whether they are legal.   With the unprecedented (in the last 100 years at least) reaction surrounding the outbreak of Covid-19, questions that few living legal scholars have considered are suddenly relevant.   Can a quarantine be ordered?   Can a mass quarantine, lockdown, or “cordon sanitaire” be ordered? Can businesses be ordered to change their behavior?   Can businesses be ordered to close? Can state governments order these measures? Can local governments order these measures? My legal brief addresses these issues from a statutory point of view; it is clear that state law gives the governor and mayors broad authority in a state of emergency. They must, of course, do so in a neutral way that they reasonably believe will help preve...
Read more

More on Why Oklahoma Should Have Already Fully Opened

Governor Stitt has declared that some businesses can open on Friday. By May 1, all enterprises in the state will be able to operate more or less normally. Eventually, at some unspecified date, Oklahoma will be fully operating again. But the question remains, and must be asked, “Was the shutdown and extreme social distancing even necessary?” For several reasons, the answer is a clear and unequivocal “No.” Let’s start with this little gem from a blog by an Oklahoma State University academic. “Harvard University epidemiologists determined that continuing extreme social distancing measures into the summer months could actually result in more COVID-19 deaths than a ‘do nothing from the beginning’ alternative.” Now, it might sound like this only confirms the decision to open up now and not extend the shutdown into the summer. But in fact, the Harvard study has a lot more to say about how this epidemic has been handled than might immediately be obvious. The Harvard study recom...
Read more

AG Hunter Lowers Boom on Barrier to Entry; Legislature Should Follow His Lead

Even as the Oklahoma Supreme Court  struck down  a recent alcohol distribution law, the Attorney General paved the way for the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Law Enforcement Commission (ABLE) to remove an obstacle from the expansion of liquor store competition - finding that Oklahoma’s five-year in-state residency requirement before one can own a liquor store likely runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution and recent U.S. Supreme Court precedent.  The AG’s  opinion , issued at the end of December, informs the state’s alcohol commission that portions of the state constitution (Article 28A, Section 4(A) & (B)) are unenforceable. These provisions require that ABLE issue a Retail Spirits License or Wine and Spirits Wholesaler License only to someone who has been a resident of Oklahoma for the previous five years. Presumably ABLE, who requested the opinion, will now begin issuing licenses to otherwise qualified applicants regardless of how long they have lived in Okl...
Read more