Independence and Erlanger resolved to support universal recognition of professional licenses issued in other states at city council meetings this week.
The resolutions, which passed by a 4-2 and 5-4 vote, respectively, affirm the cities’ commitments to a recently introduced bill in the state House of Representatives.
House Bill 343 (HB 343) would grant Kentucky the right to recognize licenses for legal occupations issued by credentialing boards in other states as long as the license holder applies for recognition, pays a $100 fee and already meets all of the educational requirements.
Council members who opposed the bill worried it might it harder to weed out unqualified people looking for work in Kentucky. Some also found the bill’s language overly broad and unhelpful.
Steven Doan (R-Erlanger) is the bill’s sponsor. Doan has been traveling around his district over the past few weeks in an attempt to explain the bill and gather support among local governments and officials.
“If you’re a licensed hairdresser over in Ohio, and you want to move to Kentucky, you would be able to move over, pay a $100 fee, and we would recognize your license so long as your Ohio license meets the same educational requirements we have here,” Doan said at a council meeting in Erlanger on Feb. 21.
Many professionals, including hairdressers, nurses, teachers and military specialists, must be granted legal permission to practice their professions by state-certified licensing boards.
Such boards are usually run on a state-by-state basis, meaning that, say, a nurse who was licensed in Kentucky may need to get a new license and complete any necessary coursework if they wish to practice nursing in another state.
Universal reciprocity, as Doan and other proponents of this bill have dubbed it, would arguably remove redundant licensing requirements for people who legally work in multiple states, streamlining workers’ abilities to find jobs.
The law would apply universally to all “lawful occupations,” which the bill defines as “a course of conduct, pursuit, or profession that includes the sale of goods or services that are not themselves illegal to sell irrespective of whether the individual selling them is subject to an occupational license.”
Doan sees the measure as a “quick fix to our workforce shortage.”
To date, 20 states, including Ohio and Virginia, have passed universal occupational reciprocity laws.
Laws of this kind have existed for a while, but they’ve seen a renewed push since 2019 when Arizona passed a law at the urging of the Goldwater Institute, a Libertarian think-tank based in Phoenix. Other fiscally conservative think-tanks have since joined in on advocacy for universal reciprocity, including the Institute for Justice and the CATO Institute.
Doan did not mention any of these groups in his statement to the Erlanger council, but the bill as introduced to the Kentucky House of Representatives apes much of the language that appears in the Goldwater Institute’s model legislation.
An alternative to universal reciprocity takes the form of multi-state compacts, in which several states will jointly agree to honor each other’s license credentials. States also enter compacts to better deal with pollution, disaster relief, crime, trade and other inter-state issues.
Multi-state compacts have their own organization to champion the legislative model, the National Center for Interstate Compacts. Kentucky presently holds memberships in multi-state occupational compacts for teaching, horse racing, charter transport and nursing.
Despite the resolution’s passage, public officials were split on their opinions of the bill.
Erlanger council member Renee Wilson believed it would make it easier for the region’s population to have greater access to services. She said that she knew of friends and family who frequently have to travel north to Cincinnati in order to get beautician and similar cosmetology services.
“I think that it would help to open that door and allow [beauty professionals] to come and work over her in Kentucky,” Wilson said.
Not everyone agreed, though.
Erlanger council member Jennifer Jasper-Lucas, who works in the insurance industry, characterized the bill as “not well thought out” and “too vague.”
“There’s a reason that different states have different requirements for licenses,” Jasper-Lucas said. “There are some industries that this may work for, but there’s a lot of industries it won’t work for.”
She wondered if the bill might have the unintended consequence of increasing “red tape” around verifying qualifications for certain professions. She concluded by saying “it might open our state up to potentially untrained workers.”
Independence council members Greg Waite and Greg Steffen expressed similar views on the bill’s language as Jasper-Lucas, that it was too broad and nondescript. Waite also wondered if such legislation was even necessary.
SBB 343 is currently awaiting committee assignment in the Kentucky House of Representatives. The next Erlanger council meeting is scheduled for March 21 at 7 p.m. at the Erlanger City Building. The next Independence council meeting is scheduled for April 3 at 7 p.m. at the Kenton County Fiscal Courthouse.