Florida is up in arms — not over crime, education or property taxes … but rather (cue sinister music) … interior design.
Working its way through the Florida legislature is a bill that would reduce regulations on 20 professions. A provision in the bill to eliminate a requirement for interior design licensing is raising hackles across the state and country. Free-market advocates are arguing that deregulation is a liberty issue and members of the establishment interior design community contending that licenses keep patrons safe.
Indeed one interior designer testifying before the Florida House Business and Consumer Affairs subcommittee claimed that eliminating licensing requirements in Florida would contribute to 88,000 deaths annually.
Florida is one of only three states to require that interior designers to be licensed. Nevada and Louisiana are the only other two.
Don Davis, director of government and public affairs for the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), told TheDC, however, that interior design regulations are common. According to the ASID 27 other states require some form of certification.
“We want to be taken out of the bill. We believe we should have the right to be licensed,” Davis said, explaining that licensing is a requirement if one is working in a commercial setting. “The only thing licensing does for our members is if you work in a code-based environment … the license allows you to work in a commercial area where you need to be able to pull permits and know how codes are applied.”
Opponents to licensing say it’s an example of an overly regulated society, and that establishment designers are using the the issue to control the market.
In an editorial published in Forbes, Chip Mellor, president and general counsel of the Institute for Justice, pointed out that one in three American workers require government permission to pursue their job.
“The Florida interior design cartel … is by no mean an anomaly,” he wrote. “Nationwide, hard-working individuals who are trying to earn an honest living in the occupation of their choice find that their means of achieving the American Dream are blocked by anti-competitive regulations and insurmountable government-imposed barriers to entry.”
In order to obtain a license one must complete six years of interior design education and apprenticeship, pass an exam, pay $30 for an application and spend $125 on a licensing fee every two years.
Clark Neily, Institute for Justice’s senior attorney, told TheDC that the law is another manifestation of lobbyists taking the upper hand on freedom.
“Interior design is absolutely a textbook example of an anti-competitive licensing law that was put on the books by the lobbying efforts of industry insiders,” said Neily. “They claim to believe that only people who hold credentials can do interior design effort. Anytime they have been forced to show evidence that there is a problem with unlicensed interior design they are unable to do so.”
According to Americans for Prosperity, practicing interior design without a license is punishable by up to a year in prison or a civil fine.
The interior design establishment has mounted a lobbying effort to stop the regulatory reform effort, hiring the most influential lobbyist in Florida, Ron Book.
“The governor down there, who has now become unpopular, has been making a movement toward deregulating everything,” said Davis. “So I think he went to his leadership they are Republican and Tea Party and basically developed this deregulation bill that would deregulate.”
The bill also proposes deregulating talent and sport agencies, hair braiders, water vending machines, ballroom dance studios and television picture tubes.