March 27, 2020
By Heather Curry
In response to the
national emergency created by COVID-19, numerous state legislatures have
suspended or adjourned their legislative sessions. In an average year, nearly
every state legislature would still be in session, actively considering
legislation related to the management of routine state affairs. While a small
handful of sessions remain active and others have tentative plans to return in
the coming weeks, in many cases it is a game of wait-and-see as policymakers
respond to the current public health crisis.
When sessions do
resume, legislators will be looking to pro-growth policy reforms to help boost
local economies impacted by the unprecedented disruption created by the closure
of businesses large and small. Fortunately, many states have already laid the
groundwork for one such essential reform.
This session, twenty states introduced versions of universal recognition, a policy long championed by the Goldwater Institute that allows licensed, trained professionals to apply for and be quickly granted a license to practice when they move into a new state. Of those 20 states, Idaho and Utah passed universal recognition bills in the past few weeks, while others, like Indiana, advanced legislation extending reciprocity to the spouses of active duty military members. Still more states, like Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma passed versions of the reform through committee or through their respective House or Senate chambers prior to ending their sessions early. First passed in Arizona in 2019, universal recognition already has a track record of success with hundreds and hundreds of Arizonans already benefiting from the reform.
Why is universal
recognition such an important reform? In many states, applicants are forced to
spend time and money to complete additional testing or training requirements
simply to continue in their current careers. Instead of evaluating the kind of
training or the number of tests a person has completed, universal recognition
empowers licensing boards to concentrate their area of consideration to whether
an individual has already been performing similar duties under their
out-of-state license. If so, then there is no need to delay in issuing a
license. So long as an applicant has held a license in good standing for at
least one year and was required to complete testing or training requirements in
the initiating state, they are eligible to receive a license. Boards no longer
need to devote unnecessary time to comparing education or training requirements
across all 50 states, and applicants are no longer required to jump through
hoops just to continue a career they were already doing safely and productively
elsewhere.
While this reform is a
commonsense one under normal conditions, the value of eliminating regulatory
delays to work is especially clear in this time of national emergency. A
startling and recurring theme across the country has been a shortage of medical
workers to provide care for patients with COVID-19 and to help stem the tide of
infection. Medical personnel are overworked, exhausted, and in need of relief.
Governors from Colorado
to Connecticut
and Texas
to Florida
have acted swiftly to remove the kind of licensing regulatory hurdles that
typically delay or block the extension of licenses to trained professionals
from out of state, putting nurses and physicians to work quickly in areas where
their contributions will be most impactful. While the approach has varied from
state to state—and is being helpfully
tracked by Americans for Tax Reform—there is a recognition across the board
that status quo regulatory hurdles create the kind of delay that could mean the
difference between life and death in a time of national emergency.
With so much
uncertainty ahead as to when many state and local economies will be able to
reopen for business, state policymakers can rely on one thing: When that time
comes, America’s licensed professionals are trained, ready, and willing to
work. State governments would be well-served to welcome them with open arms,
not red tape.
Heather
Curry is the Director of Strategic Engagement at the Goldwater Institute.
