Looking for a job as a makeup artist, teaching ballroom dancing or blow drying hair?
In some parts of the country you'll need government certification
before anyone can pay you for these services or face jail time.
Occupational licensing laws, which apply to one in three US jobs,
restrict consumer choice by protecting businesses from competition.
They also impose substantial costs on job seekers.
Arizona has one of the nation's most heavily regulated labor markets
but now the state's businessman turned governor Doug Ducey,
who's the former CEO of Cold Stone Creamery,
has made occupational licensing reform a priority.
What I wanted Arizona to be is the best place in the country to live, work and do business
and part of that is beginning a business as well as scaling a business
and that was our focus on improving that structure of government
and really stopping the bullies that were part of the boards and commissions.
Since occupational licensing laws are particular to each state,
if you're a certified hair dryer say in Virginia,
that doesn't mean you can move to Arizona and just start working.
First you have to complete a thousand hours of training
before you can obtain a state cosmetology license.
Governor Ducey is backing a new law that would change that.
Just because someone packs up that moving van in Chicago Illinois
they don't lose their skills on the way to the state of Arizona.
So why should somebody have to suffer the burden of thousands of dollars
or weeks or months of re-certification in a skill that they already have?
We had a tough time figuring out how many regulations there are in the state of Arizona
with a cracker jack staff it took us probably 18 months
to figure out there were 11,000 regulations in the state.
In 2017, Ducey issued an executive order requiring that state licensing boards
review and provide justification for rules the Governor's office deemed excessive.
The next day he signed the Right to Earn A Living Act
which restricted state boards from issuing any new occupational licensing rules
that couldn't be justified on health and safety grounds.
I think it's important that we remember who the voters are and who the citizens are
and we're here to serve them.
Too many of these boards and commissions exist to stop competition
to stifle and protect the status quo and we're changing that in Arizona.
My issue is that we don't really know what the standards are in these other states
and so why should we dumb down our standards just to deregulate basically?
I mean I see this as sort of deregulation for the sake of deregulation.
Representative Pamela Powers Hannley of Tuscon is opposed to the legislation.
What I see here is, you know, over and over and over again, you know,
throwing out licenses and certifications
and there was other bills that were proposed in the House this year
that would go even farther than this as far as deregulating occupations.
and I think at some point it gets a little risky for the populace.
How so? I mean, 'cause if you, if you're successful in another state doing this
I mean it's not like those skills don't, stop when you come into this state.
Well yes but with this we're only asking for one year of experience
I mean what's the definition of successful?
And then also how are we checking up on these people?
What about this idea of public safety?
because I do think there's a fear that you're actually going to attract people
from states that have lower standards than Arizona.
Public health and public safety is always going to be a priority for this administration
we're going to work with the individuals that are coming
and with the licensing boards in which they came from
to make sure they're making good decisions.
But I'm confident with the legislation we have, with the guardrails and details it involves
that we'll be bringing qualified people here
and ultimately it will be the opportunities that determine their success.
Arizona's over regulated labor market drew public attention in 2017.
When it came out that a student barber named Juan Carlos Montes De Oca
was being investigated by the state cosmetology board
for giving haircuts to homeless vets without a license.
The bullies at the state cosmetology board sought to stop him and stall his career
because he hadn't yet kissed their ring.
We just thought that he was just doing a good act for people that were in need.
And this was a young person just in the formative years of their career.
We thought that was the wrong thing to do
and we were very pleasantly surprised by the response that we received from the electorate
saying 'yes we don't need this overreach, we don't need this overregulation.'
The new bill recognizing out of state certification recently passed the House
and is currently under consideration in the state Senate.
We still have to prove it in the marketplace,
we still need to get it through both houses of the legislature.
Ducey credits his deregulatory agenda for Arizona's booming economy.
We're the fourth fastest growing state in the nation.
Maricopa county where we are here in greater Pheonix
is the number one fastest growing county in America two years running.
We're a state that has 70% of the adults here were born somewhere other than the state of Arizona.
I don't think that there's a better leading indicator in this country
than that people pack up a U Haul truck and say 'that's where I want to move to.'
In the game of states people vote with their feet and Arizona's winning.