In front of a second-floor bank of elevators, the libertarian group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) lined up more than a dozen “everyday Floridians” to march into a committee room.

There, lawmakers were to consider the Occupational Freedom and Opportunity Act – a move to reduce regulations on professions such as interior design, geologists and boxing timekeepers, and to repeal licensing requirements for barbers, nail specialists and make-up applicators.

“Silence your phones,” the AFP’s Brian Thiele directed a platoon of enlistees who had signed up to testify in support of the measure.

“Put your phones on vibrate, we don’t want to disrupt the meeting,” said Thiele as he walked backwards down a Knott Building hallway into a meeting of the House Business & Professions Subcommittee.

Opponents of the measure (HB 1193) had gathered on opposite sides of the room. To the right, cosmetologists reviewed their talking points. On the left, representatives of professional associations and a contingent from the Florida State University Department of Interior Design waited for the meeting to begin.

Thiele led his troops to a bank of seat, center right, between the barbers and interior designers.

Groups like the AFP, the James Madison Institute and Associated Industries have long sought to reduce regulations on Florida businesses.

The ideas behind the bill, by Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Springhill, have bounced around the Capitol for at least a decade: The House approved a similar measure in 2017 and 2018, only to see those bills die in Senate committees.

Ingoglia argues that Florida is the fourth most-regulated workforce in the nation and that the more than 1,000 different occupational licenses that Florida requires stand in the way of people making a living.

“Researchers have found little evidence that consumers are safer in states with more licensing,” Ingoglia explained to the committee.

“And there is also evidence that it reduces economic mobility and increases economic inequality,” said Ingoglia, who compared an occupational license to getting a “permission slip from the government to earn a living.”

But his opponents, who slightly outnumbered supporters among the nearly 50 people who signed up to speak, said Ingoglia is misguided. His idea could potentially hurt the very people he said he intends to help.

Patrick Bene of the Hair Academy in Brooksville explained to lawmakers if they reduce the number of hours of training required to get a cosmetology/barber license, students could be disqualified from financial aid programs.

And Jill Pable, chair of the Florida State University Department of Interior Design, said if educational and work experience are not required for a license then the profession would have no credentials to denote competency and expertise.

“Architects have a stamp; engineers have a stamp; landscape architects have a stamp. It is recognized by the building officials that that is the way construction works,” said Bryan Soukup of the American Society of Interior Designers.

“What they are doing is putting our people at a disadvantage by removing our stamp and making it harder for our people to get jobs.”

But Soukup failed to convince the committee to kill the bill.

And although it passed on a party-line vote, Rep. David Smith, R-Winter Springs, counseled Ingoglia that he should listen to what his opponents are saying.

“I’m up on the bill today because ... I think it moves Florida in the right direction,” Smith said. “However, I do believe the bill needs work, specifically in areas where we heard so much today.”

Soukup and others point to a proposal by Sen. Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, that could emerge as a compromise deregulation bill for the 2020 session.

Albritton amended it (SB 474) Tuesday to address the concerns voiced by Pable and Soukup about the need for some professions to have credentials and be regulated by the state.

Both bills have two more committees each before they can be set for floor debate.

The deregulation effort has the support of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has called an overhaul of the state’s occupational licensing requirements a “top priority of my administration.”

Writer James Call can be contacted at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on Twitter @CallTallahassee.

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