BY BRADFORD MCKEE

By Rolf van Melis [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons.

FROM THE MAY 2017 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

Anybody who values holding a license as a landscape architect is not going to like what happens next. The current political environment and a general disdain for moderation are encouraging an assault against many forms of occupational licensing, including licensing for landscape architecture. So far this year, there have been many bills introduced to end landscape architecture licensing and revamp occupational licensing structures in the legislatures of Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Virginia, and Washington. There are no doubt more to come.

These attempts take various forms. Some would outright deregulate landscape architecture by simply removing it from the group of professions that require licensing. Others are more insidious and would reform landscape architecture as well as most all other licensing systems in the guise of “right to earn a living” or “economic liberty” measures, the premise of which is that licensure poses an unnecessary barrier to entering the occupation of one’s choice. Some would allow citizens to challenge licensure requirements in court and would shift the burden to the state to prove that licensure is necessary over other, less restrictive, forms of regulation. Others would place licensure regulations at the discretion of a governor who may or may not hold the view that, as is now recognized, landscape architects are responsible for protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public. Any of them spells a potential direct threat to the profession.

Under the economic liberty argument, it would seem there is a brand of frustrated paraprofessional who would be considered professional if not for the heavy hand of the state—if you can’t meet the criteria, you take down the criteria. The real drivers, though, are antiregulation politicians, policy shops, and think tanks such as the Goldwater Institute or the Institute for Justice, who work full time to slash the scope of government for gain or for spite, and particularly resent the need of the government’s blessing to get any kind of job. They invoke, among other things, the need to protect consumers from cartels, colluders, and monopolies in the interest of free-market economics, an argument that plays well in an environment of sentimental populism.

The antilicensure movement well predates the Trump era, but the politics of the present are giving it a strong draft. In 2015, the Obama administration issued a set of “best practices” for state licensing officials of all types to consider. Much of it reads as good-sense advice to avoid discrimination or differences among states in licensing any profession. It clearly did not satisfy anti-regulation interests. In March, the Federal Trade Commission unwrapped something called the Economic Liberty Task Force. It is billed as the “first major policy initiative” of FTC Acting Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen, a Republican who was designated to her post by President Trump in January after having been a commissioner of the agency since 2012. Ohlhausen’s task force sounds ready to help states undo as much licensing as possible. In a statement introducing it, Ohlhausen opened by asking: “Should the government spend its time protecting consumers from ugly throw pillows or droopy floral arrangements?” The answer, clearly, is no, but the question misrepresents the ambition of the economic liberty phalanx, which has been known to doubt the need to regulate the supervision of physician assistants.

In recent years, advocates for landscape architecture licensure, including ASLA and the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards (CLARB), have worked with their members to beat back regular attempts in various states to render landscape architects persona non grata as a profession. “This is different,” wrote Joel Albizo, Honorary ASLA, the CEO of CLARB, recently in an advisory to colleagues. “The volume, variation, and novelty of reform approaches…add complexity and tax the community’s ability to respond.”

Not least among licensure advocates’ concerns is a chronic assumption by landscape architects themselves that their licenses are safe. This self-assurance has perhaps been supported by the achievement of licensure in all 50 states since 2010, a scenario that was years of hard work in the making. Any landscape architects who are not paying close attention and taking personal action now to make their case for distinction to their elected officials have a license that is theirs to lose.