If anyone is wondering why Nevada remains the most burdensome state in the nation for obtaining occupational licenses, look no further than the 2025 legislative session.

At the beginning of the session, it seemed as if at least some version of reform to the state’s occupational licensing boards might actually be possible. The governor had made such reform a priority in his State of the State address and the Department of Business and Industry (B&I) even issued a thorough report at the beginning of the year on the matter — a report that later became the basis for a bill (SB78) that would comprehensively overhaul of the state’s board and licensure system. 

Even more promising was that the issue of reform has become a bipartisan ambition in recent years — meaning it theoretically had a path forward despite a political environment otherwise laden with partisan gridlock. 

Nonetheless, SB78 never made it to the governor’s desk. Indeed, as The Nevada Independent reported this week, it was most likely doomed to fail from the beginning for a variety of reasons. 

At first blush, it’s easy to assume the failure is largely the result of Gov. Joe Lombardo biting off more than he could chew by trying for a large-scale restructuring of the state’s burdensome licensure structure rather than more manageable tweaks.

However, evidence suggests even far milder proposals would likely have encountered similar systemic resistance in Carson City, primarily from incumbent special interests that benefit from the state’s onerous status quo. 

SB34, for example, was another Lombardo priority that withered away unceremoniously during the session. Far from being some sweeping reform to the system, that bill was merely an attempt to enter Nevada into an interstate nurse licensure compact with 41 other states, thereby streamlining the process for nurses certified elsewhere to begin working here. For the second session in a row, however, that relatively mild proposal couldn’t get past the finish line. 

And that wasn’t the only occupational licensing effort that fell flat because of behind-the-scenes political pressure applied by certain special interests. A number of similar interstate compacts also died during the session, and a bill to make it easier for handymen to work on small home projects never even made it out of committee. 

Indeed, reforming occupational licensing burdens in even the smallest way tends to generate substantial opposition from incumbent industry insiders, government lobbyists and board members themselves — which is hardly surprising to anyone who has even the slightest understanding of the political phenomenon known as “regulatory capture.” 

Rarely will boards, commissions or other special interests that benefit from overzealous regulatory regimes champion efforts to reduce their own influence in such a system. 

From the outset, it was clear that the opposition to SB78 was no different. The boards and their lobbyists were the driving force behind the opposition to any sweeping changes in 2025. Sen. James Ohrenschall (D-Las Vegas) basically said as much before voting against the proposal when he explained that he had received “so many emails, so many phone calls from so many different boards and members.”

Such opposition, however, should hardly have been enough to doom any and all reform efforts — especially considering just how much worse Nevada’s occupational licensing burden is compared to other states. According to the Institute for Justice, the Silver State ranks worst in the nation for the burden placed on workers. In a 2020 report by the American Institutes for Research, Nevada received the “highest difficulty score” out of any state studied by the organization. 

Clearly, reform is needed. Unfortunately, objections from the very boards placing those burdens on workers are all too often enough to derail even the most common-sense proposals in Carson City. 

To be sure, not all objections to reform are the result of pure rent-seeking self-interest by industry incumbents and their bureaucratic enablers. Consumer protection is, after all, a legitimate concern for lawmakers, policymakers and regulators. 

However, a casual perusal through the state’s plethora of licensure requirements suggests a great deal of boards aren’t objectively fulfilling a crucial public interest role. It’s difficult to argue, for example, how “public safety” requires a manicurist to undergo four times as many hours of training than an emergency medical technician. Similarly, it’s laughable to believe that bad feng shui is a dangerous enough public menace to require state-level licensure for interior designers — especially considering Nevada is one of only three states to license such a benign occupation in the first place.  

Indeed, the protectionist nature of occupational boards is a problem that extends well beyond our own state. The potential harm caused to consumers and workers as a result has even gained the attention of the federal government, leading the Federal Trade Commission to create a joint labor task force for investigating allegations of “deceptive, unfair, and anticompetitive labor practices” resulting from occupational licensing boards across the country. 

As the muckraker journalist Upton Sinclair once noted, “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” And as it turns out, the salaries of a great many lobbyists, board members and industry insiders depend quite heavily on our broken, burdensome and often uncountable licensure infrastructure.

Given the political influence that group has gained over lawmakers, it’s difficult to accept the narrative that SB78 “died on its own weight” merely because it was too ambitious or “big.” It seems far more likely it died under the weight of a bloated bureaucratic class that benefits from maintaining the status quo — as have countless other far milder proposals before it. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichael or on Substack @creativediscourse.