In Oregon’s 2017 legislative session, there were two attacks on exempt practitioners. Both were killed in committee.

• House Bill 2361 died in the House Committee on Health Care. This was the bill that the Licensure Exemption Workgroup wasted so much time on, as discussed in earlier posts.
• In the Senate Committee on Health Care, Senator Steiner Hayward tried to attach an amendment to House Bill 2303 to require, apparently, anyone with a pulse to register with the Oregon Health Authority as an “alternative behavioral health practitioner.” The committee passed the original bill without the amendment.

HB 2361: A Failed Attempt to Eliminate the Counseling Exemption

The first bill, HB 2361, was just another Psychology Board overreach. This time, they thought they were being sneaky by recruiting a couple of other boards to act as their puppets. The idea was that three boards with zero credibility would carry three times as much weight with the legislature as just one board. And they do! Three times zero equals zero.

All this was just the usual nonsense: the boards live in a bubble where they take for granted everything that other people consider absurd, and vice versa. They have no ability to take the other person’s point of view or find common ground, so their ability to compromise, or even to explain their own position, is impaired. Read More...

An Engineer Can’t Call Himself an Engineer in Oregon

Oregon engineer Mats Järlström, was slapped with a $500 fine by the Oregon Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying. His crime? Sending them a helpful letter, one in which he (accurately) identified himself as an engineer.

According to the Board, no one but a licensed professional engineer can call himself an “engineer” in Oregon. Never mind that Järlström’s observations might save lives. Järlström is suing, with assistance from the Institute of Justice. (See the IJ article, Lawsuit Challenges Oregon Law Prohibiting Mathematical Criticism Without a License.)

The idea that Oregon’s engineers like me can’t call themselves “engineers” came as a big surprise to everyone. Even to Oregon’s engineers. Actually, especially to Oregon’s engineers. Why? Because licensing boards are like pointy-haired bosses, entirely antithetical to the serous, get-‘er-done mindset of engineers. They’re have nothing to contribute and are painful to listen to, so we don’t. Boards are, in a word, silly. Read More...

The Oregon Court of Appeals today overturned a disciplinary action of the Oregon Board of Psychologist Examiners.

How bad was the psychology board’s original decision? Read on and decide for yourself.

The Board Does the Right Thing … Or Does It?

David T. Bice, a licensed psychologist, was disciplined in by the board in 2011 for improprieties that allegedly happened all way back in 2003. Dr. Bice appealed, of course, and the Oregon Court of Appeals supported him, slapping down the Psychology Board for an unbelievable number of mistakes, some of which were clearly deliberate.

I quote from the Oregon Court of Appeals decision (emphasis is mine; notes ending with ‘RP’ are also mine):

“In August and September 2003, SM, an 18-year-old woman, saw petitioner [that is, Dr. Bice —RP.] as a client for seven sessions. SM had decided to stop seeing her prior therapist because she did not like the advice she was receiving and began seeing petitioner, who had been her father’s therapist, to help her process her grief over her father’s sudden death, before she left the state for college. [SM turned 18 the day after her first session with petitioner.] SM’s mother filed a complaint against petitioner shortly after SM stopped treating with him based on allegations that petitioner had behaved in a manner that made SM uncomfortable, ‘indicating that [petitioner’s] behavior with SM was personal and physical without being overtly sexual.’ The board dismissed that complaint because SM told her mother that she did not want to pursue the complaint herself and did not sign a release for her records. The board, which it now admits was in violation of its own rules, deliberately decided not to notify petitioner about the complaint or the dismissal.“
—From 281 Or App 623 (2016) Read More...

The Wall Street Journal has come out against the creep of occupational licensing, identifying it as a major cause of economic stagnation. The following is quoted from the July, 26th 2016 Wall Street Journal:

Braids of Liberty: A victory in what should be a nationwide war on occupational licensing

One reason for the slow pace of U.S. job creation is the spreading web of licensing laws that impede the self-employed and small business. So two cheers for Iowa, where state lawmakers have liberated hair-braiders from a requirement to get a state cosmetology license.

As with most such rules, hair braiding laws around the country result from lobbying by beauty-ship owners who want to hobble competitors and state licensing boards that want to retain power.  Incredibly, the Iowa law forced women who merely want to help other women braid their hair to spend as much as $22,000 and 2,100 hours in training. Some cosmetology schools don’t even teach hair-braiding, which is a skill often handed down from African-American mothers to daughters. Read More...