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 Inspires Tyranny for the "Good" of Its Victims

The Christian philosopher, C.S. Lewis, once said, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies." The moral busybodies C.S Lewis warns of reminds me of those who would have Americans give up their liberty to combat COVID-19.   A recent Oklahoman op-ed compared COVID-19 to World War II, stating that the number of deaths from COVID-19 is approaching the number that died fighting for this country and the freedoms it protects. This comparison is, of course, nonsense. This suggests that a virus with a high survivability rate is an equivalent threat to the Nazi and Japanese regimes that brutally murdered millions. The piece uses wartime rationing of meat and cheese, a sacrifice necessary to ensure men on the front lines had adequate nutrition, to justify Americans accepting counterproductive lockdowns in exchange for additional stimulus c...
Read more

Present Reforms to Keep the Ghost of State Questions Past from Creating Future Headaches

Oklahoma, like many western states, allows its citizens to directly participate in the democratic process through citizen initiatives and referendums. In a referendum, the legislature directs a question to the people — usually to modify the state constitution, since the legislature can change statutes itself. An initiative requires no legislative involvement, but is initiated by the people via signature gathering, and can be used to modify statute or amend the constitution. Collectively, the initiatives and referendums that make it onto the ballot are known as State Questions.   Recently, there have been calls to make it more difficult to amend the constitution. At least two proposals are being discussed. One would diversify the signature requirement by demanding that a proportional amount of signatures come from each region of the state. The other would require a sixty percent majority to adopt a constitutional amendment rather than the fifty percent plus one currently in place. ...
Read more

Licensing Boards Might Violate Federal Law: Regardless, They Are Terrible Policy

Competition is as American as baseball and apple pie. “May the best man win” is a sentiment so old it doesn’t care about your pronouns. The beneficial effects of competition on economic markets are well documented. So why do we let powerful business interests change the rules of the game when they tire of competing in the free market? Most of the time when an occupational license is enacted, it is the members of the regulated industry who push hardest in favor of the license. Honest competition may be fundamentally American, but thwarting that competition through licensing seems to be fundamentally Oklahoman. Oklahoma doesn’t have the most occupational licenses, but when they do license an occupation, the requirements tend to be more onerous than the same license in other states. But what if, instead of merely breaking the rules of fair play to keep out would-be competition, Oklahoma licensing boards are also breaking the law? Normally a concerted effort to lock out competition would v...
Read more

When It Comes to the Cox Center, “What if I Get to Meet a Movie Star?” Isn’t Good Enough

In a recent   post , 1889 Institute expounded on the fiduciary duty of elected officials “to act in the best interest of the people of the state as a whole,” a “high duty, executed as a public trust … wherein one puts the people’s interest above one’s own.” This fiduciary duty must not stop with elected officials. Once an elected body or an elected official – the legislature, a city council, the governor, or a mayor – has taken final action, the faithful implementation of each enacted law, policy, or program falls to an army of bureaucrats. Thus, a fiduciary duty to execute laws and policies with diligence and integrity, tantamount to that of elected officials, must extend to government employees. Recently, I had a few moments to sit down and watch a show with my children. Unsurprisingly, my son picked a series entitled “The Stinky and Dirty Show.” I was naturally skeptical that the show would yield any real value. However, as I watched, I found myself pleasantly surprised. Each ep...
Read more