Following a Colorado legislative session when Republicans rarely saw eye to eye with Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, his vetoes of three occupational licensing bills produced a rare moment of agreement.

On Friday, Polis vetoed:

• Senate Bill 133, which would have regulated genetic counselors;
• Senate Bill 99, which would have required agents for athletes to register with the state; and
• House Bill 1212, which would have required homeowners’ association managers to register with the state.

All three bills had Democratic prime sponsors. The first two bills garnered a few GOP votes in the House and Senate; the third was passed with all Republicans and two Democrats voting against.*

In his veto letters, Polis offered the same explanation for his rejection of the HOA and agents licensing bills: That “before any unregulated occupation is to be regulated, or any regulated occupation is to be continued, the state should complete its due diligence to ensure that regulation will, in fact, ensure consumer safety in a cost-efficient manner. This bill does not meet that threshold.”

“Occupational licensing is not always superior to other forms of consumer protection,” Polis continued.

That was also part of his reasoning for vetoing the genetic counselor bill. He added that genetic counseling “is a new field, and we must balance quality assurances with consumer access to innovation and affordability.”

The veto of the HOA bill didn’t sit well with the Community Associations Institute, which in the past has been one of the loudest advocates for legislation reforming the state’s construction defects laws.

The institute issued a statement in response to the veto, joined by the Democratic lawmakers who sponsored the bill.

“We raised the bar on what it meant to manage a community, and homeowners were the beneficiaries,” said Brandon Helm, the chair of the group’s legislative action committee. “Now, homeowners will need to go out and do their own homework to make sure their managers really know what they are doing.”

“To say that licensing hasn’t helped is unfounded by a lack of long term data,” said state Rep. Brianna Titone, D-Arvada, who has been active in her homeowners’ association. “I would say that licensing has prevented problems from happening and discouraged bad behavior. Any real consumer protection will be very similar to the existing program, so I believe starting from scratch is the wrong course of action.”

Republican state lawmakers, on the other hand, applauded the vetoes.

Senate Minority Leader Chris Holbert of Parker said he agreed with the vetoes.

The sunrise statute, which starts the process for licensing an occupation, exists for many reasons, Holbert explained. Under that process, staff members of the Colorado Office of Policy, Research and Regulatory Reform (COPRRR) — part of the state Department of Regulatory Agencies, or DORA — review whether there is a need to regulate a previously unregulated occupation or profession, triggered by an application to the COPRRR.

Colorado is rare in that the legislature can’t regulate business occupations without going through the sunrise application first, Holbert said.

“I don’t see this as a partisan question. The sunrise application process has been supported and amended in bipartisan ways for many years, and I appreciate [Polis] upholding that process.”

Holbert added that he hopes the vetoes are a good reminder for lawmakers, especially those who have little experience with DORA.

Republican Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg of Sterling also has beat the drum for regulatory reform on occupational licensing over the years. He told Colorado Politics that the state licenses a lot of occupations that have no safety concerns. “It makes sense to remove regulation and licensing, especially when you can’t enforce it.”

Neither, however, saw Polis’ veto as a potential olive branch to Republicans, especially, as Sonnenberg put it, that the governor never reached out to the minority party on these issues.

While he was surprised by the vetoes, Tony Gagliardi, Colorado state director for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), applauded them, saying he believes Polis is an independent thinker who won’t necessarily march in lock-step on some issues with his party.

“We view many occupation licensing requirements as barriers to entry,” Gagliardi told Colorado Politics. “Unless there’s a clear-cut reason or danger, we believe that we could do with less licensing rather than more.”

If you look at the professions licensed by DORA, he added, sometimes the bar is so high for a brand-new person entering a profession that it becomes impossible, and that it often includes exorbitant costs.

Occupational licensing as an element of regulatory reform has been a GOP target for years. Most recently, in 2018, Republicans Sen. Don Coram of Montrose and Rep. Terri Carver of Colorado Springs tried to rein in occupational rules by requiring state agencies to demonstrate that those rules had a specific and legitimate public health, safety or welfare goal.

Under Senate Bill 193 that year, state agencies would have conducted a comprehensive review and analysis of every occupational rule already in place. The agency would then have determined whether that regulation should be repealed or amended.

The bill cleared the Senate on a party-line vote, where Republicans then held a one-seat advantage, but died in the Democrat-controlled House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee on a party-line vote.

Writing for The Hill in April, Benjamin Powell of the California-based Independent Institute said occupational licensing is a major regulatory burden on the nation’s economy.

Powell wrote that “occupational licensure has little to do with competency or quality. Most academic studies find no positive relationship between licensure and quality. Furthermore, the difficulty in obtaining a license often has little to do with the risk associated with malpractice. … Occupational licensure is primarily for the benefit of existing practitioners.”

Powell also noted that in 2019, “one in five workers in the United States needs government permission to practice a profession. Only one in 20 workers required such permission in 1950.”

Polis vetoed two other measures on Friday:

• Senate Bill 169, which Polis viewed as stepping on the executive branch’s authority over state-issued information technology contracts. The bill would have changed the budget submission requirements for major IT projects, as well as requiring the governor’s Office of Information Technology to assign a project manager for all major IT projects. “We have a number of concerns with how this bill affects our ability, and future Governors’ abilities, to effectively manage how IT projects are planned, procured, and successfully delivered,” Polis wrote in his veto letter.
• And while Polis vetoed House Bill 1305, which would have given the state’s two federally-recognized Indian tribes access to a state database for purposes of conducting background checks, Polis issued an executive order to the Department of Public Safety to provide that access. Polis said he vetoed the bill over concerns about tribal sovereignty.

Correction: an earlier version said that House Bill 1212 was approved on a party-line vote.