Beekeepers and bondsmen, massage therapists, surgeons, travel agents and professional wrestlers. They seem to have nothing in common, yet each is among the approximately 140 occupations in Rhode Island that require a license. It’s a list that includes professional careers such as CPAs, engineers, architects and attorneys as well as more unconventional livelihoods like auctioneers, cattle dealers, chauffeurs and fur buyers. There are also doctors, nurses and optometrists and school principals, superintendents, bus drivers and teachers.
Jobs are licensed to maintain at least a minimal degree of occupational competence or, as in the case of beekeepers, for control, as in controlling the number of hives in the state and so stem bee-carried infectious diseases. (The list of occupational licenses does not include licensed “functions,” like notary publics, or licenses to run certain businesses.)
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Licenses are about protecting the public, said Thomas Culhane, a staff person with the RI Occupational Information Coordinating Committee. And although for many jobs there are education and experience requirements, in others, the major issue is that a person pays the fee.
Who decides if a job should be licensed? Basically, Culhane said, “somebody gets the idea,” state legislators propose the law, and if it makes its way all the way through the General Assembly and the governor signs it, then voila, a new license is born.
It can be confusing, Culhane said, because terms used in laws to regulate occupations, such as “licensed,” “certified” and “registered,” are often used interchangeably. For example, a teacher’s license is commonly called certification, while a licensed engineer is “registered.”
Each license category has a basic job description, personal requirements such as age, citizenship or residency and requirements for education and/or experience. It also tells whether there’s a state exam, reciprocity arrangements with other states, renewal requirements and fees.
Some jobs, like dog track and jai alai workers and driving instructors, require passing a State Police Bureau of Criminal Identification (BCI) check. To shoot fireworks (legally) you must pass a psychiatric exam, to be a foster parent requires a check from the Department of Children, Youth and Families, and to become a family day care home provider requires getting fingerprinted.
And, to be a drug auctioneer, a chiropractor and a funeral director, you must also “be of good moral character,” archaic wording that stems from the period when a particular law was written, said Russell Spaight, administrator, professional regulation in the state Department of Health.
If carried to the letter, such wording would cause problems, said Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. “But as far as we know it’s not used in any meaningful way to deny people licenses,” he said.
Another area that potentially could cause problems is in license requirements still on the books for jobs like cosmetologists and barbers, which decree that the licensee be “free from contagious and infectious disease.”
If that were followed to the letter, “that would be very problematic,” Brown said, citing discrimination issues, such as requiring people to disclose HIV status. “Those are legitimate concerns.”
These “antiquated statute[s]” date back to the late 1880s and early 1900s, when the first licenses were established for dentists and physicians and tuberculosis reigned, Spaight said. Today, he added, all the health department requires is a note from a personal physician that the applicant is “free from communicable disease, and that’s it.”
Although not a pressing issue, Brown said, “I think it would certainly be useful” to have a “thorough and comprehensive review” of the state’s license requirements.
Securities sales representatives, regulated by the Division of Securities at the state Department of Business Regulation, got the most licenses in 1999, 54,519. Other popular categories were electricians (6,475) commercial fishers (8,451) hoisting engineers (4,410) and insurance producers (22,338). Culhane said the reason numbers are so high for insurance sales is that anybody who sells insurance in Rhode Island, even if he or she works for a California company, must have a Rhode Island license.
Brand new license categories include sheet metal worker, regulated by the state Department of Labor and Training, and body piercers, for which the health department is still completing regulations, Spaight said. Newer licenses, established in the last 20 years, include athletic trainers, radiologists, dietitians and lab technicians. “Most of the professions we regulate [have] at least some direct impact on public health,” Spaight said, “and most people don’t argue with that.”
Some license requirements have more impact on employers than employees, said Culhane, citing requirements for a pharmacy technician license. “The employer has to agree to provide onsite training,” he said. “The employee doesn’t have to do anything.”
License fees range from the accountant’s $50 annual practice fee to $250 for an acupuncturist, $25 for a barber, $50 for a blaster, and hundreds of dollars in examination costs for an architect.
Where the money goes “depends on who sets the fee,” said State Librarian Tom Evans, whether it’s at the agency level, the General Assembly, or through local cities and towns. “A lot of the fees are by statute,” Evans said.
Although all fees collected from licenses registered under the state Department of Health used to go into restricted receipt accounts within the department (about three or four years ago they collected a total of $1.2 million, Spaight said), those fees are now assumed under the state’s General Fund, “and we get a budget allocation.”
For more information, check out the Rhode Island handbook, “Licensed Certified Registered Occupations.” Although no more books are currently available, the same information can be found on the Web at www.dlt.state.ru.us/webdev/lmi/rioicc for Rhode Island or www.loic.noicc.gov for Rhode Island as well as most other states.
