Why license librarians? Some regulation called outdated

By Aaron Gould Sheinin

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A funeral home in McDonough is fined $350. Why? For not having at least eight caskets in its display room.

The same month, more than 25 hair stylists are cited for practicing without a license. Same for more than a dozen contractors, three dentists and one veterinarian.

The punishments were handed out by a few of the dozens of professional licensing boards and commissions in Georgia that keep tabs on nearly every profession. All of the boards operate under the Office of the Secretary of State’s Professional Licensing Board Division, which oversees the operation and licensing of 36 boards that issue nearly 200 kinds of licenses to more than 400,000 professionals.

While most of the boards provide protections to consumers, Secretary of State Karen Handel wonders whether some haven’t worn out their usefulness.

“You have to ask the question: Do we still need a board for librarians?” Handel said in a recent interview.

The Georgia State Board for the Certification of Librarians was created in 1937 because lawmakers at the time required that any public librarian “serving a population of 5,000 or more and every library operated by the state or its authority meet certain minimum education qualifications.”

But, Handel points out, that was before the state and counties conducted what are now routine employment, education and personal background checks on job applicants.

The library board gets few applications, she said, and hardly ever a complaint filed against an existing license holder. While there are 1,012 licensed librarians in the state, the board itself rarely does more than meet every few months. At its most recent meeting, Nov. 18, the only action the board took was to ratify licenses they had already issued.

And, Handel said, there just aren’t many consumer or public health issues dealing with librarians.

Part of the problem, she said, is that the state has no mechanism to regularly review the myriad boards and commissions to see if they’re still needed. Not yet, anyway. Handel has supported proposed legislation currently in the state Senate that would require the Georgia Occupational Review Council to create a rolling, seven-year cycle of reviewing all of the boards. The council exists now only to review proposals to create new boards or commissions.

The bill would allow the state to ask some “fundamental questions,” she said, such as, “Why are we regulating the profession?” “Are we regulating too much, too little or the right amount?”

Another board of questionable value, Handel said, is one that oversees athlete’s agents. As of Nov. 18, there were 68 such licensed agents in the state, the fewest licensees of any of the state’s boards and commissions. The board hasn’t met in more than a year.

On the other end of the effectiveness spectrum might be the state Board of Funeral Service, which oversees almost 4,000 license holders, from funeral directors to embalmers to funeral homes themselves. At its most recent meeting, in September, the board levied more than $1,300 in fines against nine funeral homes for violations ranging from the number of caskets in the show room to failing to have a separate sink in the embalming room for disinfecting hands and instruments.

Death is not always clean. Lauren McDonald, vice chairman of the board and president of McDonald & Son Funeral Home in Cumming, said the board plays an important role in protecting the health and safety of the public.

“When there is a death, the body is almost like a petri dish,” he said.

State law has strict licensing requirements for funeral homes and their employees. Many of the board’s cases deal with funeral homes that don’t have fully licensed directors who are ultimately responsible for the business.

Its work is not only theoretical, either. In 2006, a Griffin funeral home owner faced charges after a decomposing body was found along with unclaimed cremated remains. Three years later, the remains of 12 people left unclaimed or unknown were buried by the county.

“We have to protect the consumer,” McDonald said.

But even the funeral board has limited power, something else that bothers Handel about the system. Of the 36 professional licensing boards, only the board overseeing architects and interior designers has the power to levy fines on its own.

For the rest, including the funeral board, if a complaint or investigation finds, for example, a funeral director operating without a license, the board can issue a cease and desist order. If the unlicensed director ignores the order, only then can fines be levied or criminal charges filed.

That, Handel said, makes no sense.

“You’ve already broken the law once,” she said, “but the board doesn’t have the authority to fine unless they do it again.”