The patron saint of lost causes, legislative division, was former state Rep. Jerry Kopel, D-Denver, who died last week at 83.
He understood that bureaucracy at the state level doesn’t usually grow because bureaucrats want more power for its own sake. It grows because businesses, trades and professions are always asking government to help them limit competition and thus keep prices up. Not that they put it that way, of course.
Kopel, who served 22 years in the House, tried to restrict their ability to do that. It was an uphill push, and the stone kept rolling back, but he did the best he could.
In 1976 Kopel sponsored Colorado’s Sunset Law. It requires every regulatory board in the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) to justify its existence every few years or go out of business.
He also sponsored the Sunrise Law of 1985, which requires trades seeking regulation to undergo screening by the Department of Regulatory Agencies before coming to the legislature with a bill. One of those promoting the Sunrise Law was then-DORA Director Wellington Webb, who was overwhelmed by the number of businesses seeking regulation.
Originally the Sunrise Law required applicants to show DORA that an unregulated practice actually harms the public; that the public would in fact benefit from regulation and there’s no more cost-effective way to help consumers. It has subsequently been weakened so that sometimes all a trade has to do is show that it’s regulated in many other states.
It’s always the businesses who seek state oversight, Kopel realized. “I’ve never seen a consumer who wants regulation,” he once said.
Despite the hurdles, there are now 55 professions and trades regulated by DORA’s division of registrations, from accountants through veterinarians. That doesn’t include real estate and insurance agents, bankers, brokers and taxi companies, who all have their own separate divisions in DORA. No one seems to have any trouble surviving sunset legislation.
And the march toward regulation continues. There are at least two more trades seeking regulation this year.
One of them is the Colorado Dietetic Association, which is behind House Bill 1060, sponsored by Rep. Tom Massey, R-Poncha Springs. It is scheduled to come up before the House Agriculture Committee Monday.
This isn’t the first time dietitians have sought regulation. They’ve tried a half dozen times to get DORA approval during the past 25 years, but in the legislature bills couldn’t get out of the first committee.
Now they’re back, arguing that there must be a state board of dietitians “to protect the health, safety and welfare of the public.” The 28-page bill as drafted specifies dietitians must provide proof of education and field experience of 1,200 hours. Enforcement would be provided by a five-member board, three of whom would be dietitians. Penalties for practicing without a license include a fine of $500 and up to six months in jail. But each day of violation constitutes a separate offense.
The bill won’t get a free ride. At least two groups with competing nutrition philosophies are opposed: the Sunshine Health Freedom Foundation and the Alliance for Natural Health. The latter accuses the American Dietetic Association of “trying to sew up a legally enforced national monopoly” on nutrition services. It also suggests that the association gets $1 million a year from pharmaceutical companies pushing diet pills, plus an undetermined amount from “junk food” outfits like Coca-Cola, Hershey, Mars and PepsiCo.
Bill supporters maintain that exclusions will permit unregistered nutritionists to continue to offer some services, but the health freedom foundation disagrees, contending the bill “attempts to subsume the entire field of nutrition.”
The Colorado Association for Music Therapy is also seeking mandatory registration for practitioners of whatever that might be. I thought most music was already therapeutic. Violators could be found guilty of misdemeanors. Its 26-page bill would “protect our title” and increase access to Medicaid waiver funding. Ahhh. It’s about the money.
It has Democratic sponsorship and GOP Speaker Frank McNulty assigned it to the State Affairs Committee, often considered a death sentence. The nutritionists may not have a better case, but they do have a Republican sponsor and thus weren’t sentenced to State Affairs.
Punishments for violations of Colorado’s economic laws are real enough. Philip Sullivan of Aspen, age 76, began a 15-day jail sentence Wednesday for contempt of court. He had continued to offer a one-man taxi service in the ski resort despite a judge’s order to stop. He doesn’t have a PUC certificate and continued his operation despite having served a nine-day sentence last March for the same offense. He didn’t charge a specific fee but accepted tips, which High Mountain Taxi, the legal monopolist in town, complained to the PUC about.
There is no reason for the PUC to control entry into the taxi market, but it does and the legislature, thanks to pressure and contributions from the established taxi oligopoly, has rejected many attempts over the years to liberalize the law.
If a trade wants to promote itself and its image, it can form a private association which requires members to meet certain standards. It shouldn’t ask the government to restrict competition by force of law.
Longtime Rocky Mountain News political columnist Peter Blake now writes Thursdays for the Colorado News Agency. Contact him at pblake0705@comcast.net You may re-publish his work at no charge and without further permission; please give full credit to Peter Blake and www.ColoradoNewsAgency.com