NC Trade Licensing | Hour 2

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, I Daily Show prep with all of the links, become a patron, go to thepeakclendarshow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. All Right, big news this week. The state legislature is back starting tomorrow in Raleigh for the short legislative session. They've got a big, big plate full of budget issues, lots of public safety things going on there, so we're going to be paying attention to what they're doing. Among them. Legislative leaders have formed a new subcommittee just breaking news this morning, and that is under the Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations. They're going to examine the state's prison system, particular the early release of more than four thousand inmates during the COVID nineteen pandemic following a legal settlement and involving former Governor Roy Cooper. So Republican legislative leaders say this review is going to focus on transparency, public safety, accountability, and how those release decisions were made, how they were communicated. The leaders are arguing that the public did not receive timely information about who was being released of those four thousand folks and under what conditions. They planned to examine both the policy decision and the legal framework behind this settlement. The settlement was reached between the Cooper administration. Governor Roy Cooper was he was governor at the time. Current Governor Josh Stein was the attorney general at the time, and they had this settlement with the NAACP and the ACLU during COVID nineteen, and you remember all those distancing issues that were going on at the time, and they just decided to really these four thousand prisoners during the COVID nineteen said So, lawmakers are going to be digging into this through this subcommittee, but they're also going to be looking at broader issues within the state prison system, including staffing levels, healthcare, re entry programs, recidivism trends. Lawmakers say that the goal is really to assess whether current correctional policies are effectively protecting us, protecting public safety while managing the long standing operational challenges that are in the system. Certainly staffing is a huge part of that. The effort is expected to include examination of actions taking during the Cooper administration and what role did then Attorney General Josh Stein now governor take. They really want to see how this settlement agreement shaped the scope of inmate releases during the pandemic. These were all questions that most folks were asking themselves, you know who is on this list? There just wasn't public information about who these four thousand people were. Well, now we're starting to get it and they have a lot of questions. These findings could really inform future legislative changes to North Carolina's corrections, policies, and oversights. Meantime, the political fundraising picture in North Carolina is taking shape ahead of the November general election. New filings show that former Governor Roy Cooper brought in about thirteen point eight million dollars in the first quarter. Now that's compared to five million dollars raised by Republican candidate Michael Wattley in the first quarter of twenty twenty six. Our most recent Carolina Journal poll has Cooper leading Watleigh by about eight points, and that's an important point to make in all of this, because eight points isn't that much when we have whatever it is, nine ten months to go before the election. Governor Roy Cooper, of course, has had statewide public office enjoyed pretty high approval ratings as governor. He's been in statewide public office for thirty forty years now. Everybody knows who he is, and for the most part, he's been had pretty high approval ratings in the you know, high forties for the most part. Michael Wattley, the Republican candidate. This is his first run. He has led the Republican National Committee at the national level. He was also leading the North Carolina Republican Party at the NCGOP, So a lot of people don't really know who he is just yet. So I think you are going to be bombarded, mark my words. You are gonna be bombarded with ads. You're gonna need to be checking Carolina Journal dot com and WBT dot com all the time to find out what's going on and what other facts are in these races because you're gonna getting ads all the time. The fundraising gap certainly gives Cooper an early financial edge as both parties begin positioning for the super competitive state ride race. It's expected to be one of the most expensive Senate races in history. I'm hearing numbers like seven hundred and fifty million dollars. They're both running for the seat held by Senator Tom Tillis, who announced last summer that he would not be running for reelection. So, you know, all of these things going on. We're gonna be watching the state legislature, certainly watching the Senate race as we make our way toward November, and try and dodge a lot of these ads and keep the facts where they should be. One of the issues that lawmakers are also going to be dealing with is not having a budget and a Medicaid funding cliff that might be headed our way. Medicaid is one of the big issues on the table. Funding shortfall could affect millions of enrollees. But the big question from lawmakers isn't just how much money, it's is this system being managed responsibly? Are we finding and rooting out fraud. There have been legislative hearings raising concerns about oversight gaps, potential waste fraud, abuse of our Medicaid system, and whether some of these cost overruns were predictable and preventable. That's what lawmakers want to know. They're going to be pressing state officials. There was already some hearings last week about this, pressing state officials for answers before committing any additional tax dollars our money. Right, it reflects a core principle right, government programs must be accountable before they're expanded. We're hearing that a lot from lawmakers. If you're new to North Carolina, here's a little bit of the backstory about Medicaid expansion. So while Medicaid expansion is funded separately from the regular Medicaid program, there's a different formula for it. The Fed pays ninety percent, the state pays ten percent of the Mandicaid expanded population. So Medicaid expansion, if you're not aware, that is the group of folks who are able bodied, working age and don't make enough or get public get their employer to cover their health insurance, but make too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid. That's that's the expanded population in North Carolina. That's about seven hundred thousand people the state expanded Medicaid. They took the deal from the Biden administration in twenty twenty three to expand Medicaid cover those seven hundred thousand people. But the way they wrote the legislation is they create a sort of financial off ramp. The deal relies on the federal government to cover ninety percent of the cost, but if Washington ever reduces that share or shifts more of that burden onto taxpayers, the law allows expansion to be scaled back or repealed automatically. So that's a question, right. Will I if the federal government changes that formula. It looks like they're going to because the one Big Beautiful Bill says you can't tax hospitals to the rate that you had been to pay the delta to cover the delta. That means that it's changed, right it was. It only took two years for the Fed to change the deal, and so it looks like if they do nothing, Medicaid expansion will be repealed. You know, all of this is about tying to our budget stability federal policy changes, but what it really says is that Medicaid expansion was conditional, not open ended. So these will be things that they're talking a lot about there at the corner of Jones and Blunt Street in Raleigh as the new legislative session comes in. 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They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit davideo dot com. Today we're looking at a case involving a North Carolina drone company owner whose dispute with state licensing regulators reached the US Supreme Court, but the court declined to hear it. So much Kokit from the John Locke Foundation joins us. Now talking about that case raises some broader questions, Mitch about whether when the state can require professional licenses. Thanks for joining us. Tell me what you think about this case? Yeah, very interesting case and it's unfortunate, Donna that the US Supreme Court decided not to take the case. It actually had a number of opportunities to decide whether to deal with this case and basically kept putting off a decision until this morning. The initial appeal to the highest court in the nation came in September of twenty twenty four, and this case appeared on the Justice's list for their closed door conference seven times well before they finally decided with their ruling today not to cut the case. But basically, the background of this case is quite interesting. He's a fellow named Michael Jones, who did not have extensive background in education, didn't go to college, had a ged. His work background was in welding and it but at some point he decided he wanted to get involved in drones, and he used the Internet to teach himself how to operate a drone. He took the federal examination to be able to use a drone, so there is some certification process involved here. And in twenty sixteen he started offering drone services and formed his company three sixty Virtual Drone Services in twenty seventeen, all was going fine until he started offering aerial mapping services, which is something a drone can do, and in late twenty eighteen December of twenty eighteen, a state regulatory board warned him that they were launching an investigation because he did not have a surveyor's license. And after he learned about this investigation, he added a disclaimer to his website saying that he's not surveying and nothing that he's doing would help someone who needed to have a surveyor. But then despite that disclaimer, he got a letter in June of twenty nineteen saying that he was likely violating state law. So he dropped this particular service, but in twenty twenty one filed a lawsuit with help from the Institute for Justice and both a federal trial judge. In twenty twenty three and the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against him in twenty twenty four, and so it brings up this whole issue of this is a guy who just took it on himself, didn't go through a long, expensive training program or educational program, but learned how to use drone, was going to use the his expertise that he developed after training on the internet, took to help him make a living, and state regulators stepped in and said, no, you can't do that. You're surveying without a license, and you got to stop. And that's the type of thing that we should hope that government doesn't do. We should hope the government gets out of the way and allows people to use their own skills and their own background and in this case, his own technology, the drone that he bought to be able to make a living, which is something that mister Jones and his business were doing without harming anyone, and especially after he put up a disclaimer on his website saying I'm not surveying. If you need a surveyor, you still need a surveyor. And yet the regulators said, no, what you're doing is illegal. If something that concerns all of us. Sure sure. You know, one of the things that we talk about a lot at the John Locke Foundation is the right to the fruits of one's labor. The government or state government offers thing like one hundred and sixty different occupational licenses. What does this indicate to me? Which is alarming? You know, that's far more hair braiding, now, the surveying, the drone operating, all of these things. What does this tell us about the role the government should have in the ability to issue licenses and control the market in that way. Certainly there are some electrician, you know, name it that should have a licenses, but you think we have too many licenses. Is this bureaucrats sort of justifying their existence. Yeah, certainly there are too many licenses. And one of the things that happens that's a problem is that it's not the case that legislators are running around saying, let's license this, let's license that. What ends up happening typically is that people who are involved in a business already decide that they want to block other people from getting into that business, so they decide to go to state lafemakers that say, look, you know, you want to protect people from from folks who might have a bad agenda or won't be well trained, and so wouldn't you like to set up a licensing scheme to make sure you're protecting people from bad actors out there? And of course the people who are already in the business are going to be protected, but they basically end up setting up a modern form of a guild that keeps other people out unless they go through a long, involved, expensive process of getting training. And you mentioned that number of licenses, North Carolina is on the high end of that of that number when you compared to other states. And one of the things that the Lock Foundation has talked about in the past in looking at reforming occupational licensing is let's look at all of the light the occupations that North Carolina licenses now, and let's look at other states. And if these occupations are licens in every state, then okay, that's probably a sign that maybe this is an occupation that deserves to have a license. But if they aren't occupied in every state, then maybe we ought to look at the fact that some of these occupations can take place in other states without a license, and people are okay, they either they'll go to the Better Business Bureau or they'll get a referral from a friend, or they will go through the way that they conduct their lives in every other's respect when there's something at hand that doesn't involve a license. And if we cut out all of the businesses that aren't licensed in other states, then we would get into a much healthier situation in North Carolina where more people would be able to be free to exercise their own talents and to enjoy, as you said, guaranteed in our state constitution, the right to the enjoyment of the fruits of your own labor. And that's the type of thing that could be very beneficial for our economy. Sure, yeah, yeah, We've done. A number of great things for the economy, lowering tax rates, lowering regulatory burden. But another thing that ought to be done is limiting the reach of these occupational licensing boards. And in fact, in this case, remember this is not even a guy who was trying to survey without a license, so he wasn't trying to run a foul of an existing licensing board. He was just doing what his drone helped him do, provide these aerial mapping services. And the licensing board stepped in and said no, what you're doing is surveying, and so you got to stop. So once the licensing board is in effect, sometimes the folks who are in charge of it will look for things that expand their base of power rather than sitting back and just allowing things to play out as they could. That's alarming because you mentioned that in many cases, these licensing boards are by people who are already in the business, their limiting competition when they do this. That's definitely true. A lot of these licensed boards are run by the people who are involved in the business itself. That's the source of a US Supreme Court decision that came out some years ago about North Carolina's dental board and talking about the fact that you had so many people who were practicing dentists on the dental board and there seemed to be a conflict of interest. Does this indicate what the High Court's views on these licensing disputes is or do you think that they were just decided not to take this out. Does this go to a lower court and they think it should be stated? What do you read into this? Yeah, I'm guessing that the Supreme Court decided its docket was pretty full and that they didn't see this case as one that would be one that would help resolve issues. Now, unfortunately, what you end up with, and this is something that we saw in a court filing last December, is that there is a circuit split. And for those who don't follow the court, what that means is different appeals courts across the country have reached different conclusions in cases just like this one. We're in the fourth Circuit, but the fifth, the ninth, the eleventh, the seventh, and the second have all come up with different ways of addressing this exact question of what is the level of scrutiny that these types of regulations need and can the regulations survive because they're infringing on people's economic rights. The Supreme Court, even though it saw this circuit split, has decided at this point not to take up this case to help resolve the split. Fantastic Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation, Thanks so much for joining us. If you want to read more about this, head over to Carolina Journal dot com. The full story is there, and of course at WBT dot com. So it turns out as North Carolina's economy continues to expand, a new University of North Carolina System report shows a growing mismatch between our workforce needs and the kind of degrees that our university system is churning out. So this report says we need thousands of more degrees in fields like engineering, education, nursing, accounting to keep pace with our state's employer demand. Today, you're joined by Jenna Robinson, Executive director of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, to talk about what's driving these gaps and what it means for the future of higher education. Here, Jenna, Good, afternoon, Thanks for being with us. It's great to talk to you. Donna, good to talk to you. Tell us talk broadly. What stands out the most to you in this UNC system Workforce Alignment report? The gap in our. Economy, right, So, I think the thing that stands out to me, and it's maybe not surprising, is that our very serious healthcare workforce needs. We need more nurses, we need more health home health aids, we need more doctors, we need more of every every category of healthcare workers. We need more of those in North Carolina. And I think that's the you know, that's that's by far the biggest category. But I think what also really stands about to me about the whole report, is how ambitious, how ambitious it is, because it's really it's trying to do something that ideally the market would be doing. Right, right, Well, do you think that this is a problem a capacity problem in our unc system, or is this a student choice problem or is it something else? I think it is mostly a student choice problem. We are the UNCW probably heard is adding a medical school. So North Carolina also just added a new another new private medical school. And so I think that you know that mostly it is it's a student choice problem. And that's because they're not the market signals are not coming through because we have several overregulated industries kind of crashing together. Right. Education very very highly regulated. Higher education is regulated, you know, from the federal government straight down to the state government, and it's a very slow moving entity. And then you've got you know, the healthcare profession itself, which is regulated also from the top down all the way to the bottom, including things like certificate of need. And so when those two very highly regulated industries are trying to create a match, you know, we end up having to do you know, giant studies like this instead of allowing the market to guide people naturally to the careers that make the most sense. You mentioned certificate of need. That really is a critical component in this. You know, they're saying roughly five to ten thousand additional degrees are needed annually. But with certificate of need in place, you know, people can't graduate with an advanced degree and just put out a shingle to serve their communities in the healthcare system. Can you tell me a little bit about why that is and what you see in the need. Well, it's you know, it's it's anti competition, right. Our current hospitals are trying to ensure that they continue to maintain market share, and they do that by limiting the number of beds, the number of machines, the number of tests that are available, by saying that anytime a new entity, as you said, a new person wants to go hang up there, hang out their shingle, they have to prove that their service or the or the MRI machine or the bed that is needed. They have to prove the need before they're even allowed to go into business. And that's just not something we do in other areas of the economy, and it makes it very complex. I think the other thing that we don't allow, you know, nurse practitioners to do all of the things that they really can do and are qualified to do. And so we get this, uh, probably inflated need for doctors because we over regulate what we allow our nurse practitioners and how we allow them to practice. So so you're putting out two gaps that are public policy gaps, not university gaps. So if we were to repeal certificate of need, let nurse practitioners operate independently, open their own practices in some of these communities that really don't have the healthcare, the university could respond and fill those gaps. What do we want to look toward our universities to do? Should they be advocating for those policy changes at the state legislature. I mean, I think that that that could be something they could do, but I think it probably would go against their you know, they want for students, they want enrollment, so I don't know that they have very good incentives to do that, sure, but I think that what our universities have done already and can do more of is to let students know, you know, what's in this report, let them know where the jobs are because I think students are often not very well informed, and that's why you see students majoring in things where it turns out there really aren't any jobs. And so if we give students the information that you know, nursing is going to be a solid career, or that we need more engineers, I think that they will respond if they have that information. But I think that the good data on return on investment for students is just now making its way around, and we still need so much more communication on that because I think so many students and guidance counselors still think that, you know, if I go to college, I'm going to make a million more dollars then if I if I only go to high school. And that is such a blanket statistic, right, It varies so much by major, by institution, by whether you graduate, by whether you graduate on time. And so I think by informing students better, the universities can do their part in you know, in this in this really kind of like two part process. You're part of his industry, part of his education. Sure do you see resistance within higher education to adjust programs based on labor market demands and just churning out you know, well, educated kids, but well educated kids who can work. Yes, I think there has been pushback because people worry that our universities are getting, you know, too much focused on careers and not not as much focused on you know, the inherent reasons for learning and building citizens and I have sympathy with that. But I think that I think they can do both. I think that we can put citizenship and literature and philosophy in the general education program and then make sure that students are kind of guided towards degrees that will pay off in their major. And I think that, you know, the UNC system has actually been pretty good about this, about doing its own ROI studies and and and now with this report, you know, saying very clearly, you know, healthcare and engineering are where the real needs are. Absolutely. Jenna Robinson, thank you so much, calling from the Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Thanks for your time today. Thanks don, I take care. I'm Donna King from Carolina Journal, filling in for Pete Callaner today. Glad to be with you. We got a question from our text line, and if you have any questions, give us a text at seven oh four five seven h one zero seven nine that WBT text line is driven by Liberty Buick GMC. What text are calling in about the SAVE Act and the NC Board of Nursing. What's the role in expanding the scope of practice for nurse practitioners. So this particular piece of legislation, it all gets really complicated, but it's called the Save Act and it's had bipartisan support. Here in North Carolina, the state legislature just has not really gotten traction moving through. But what it does right now is it would allow nurses what they call advanced practice nurse practitioners APRNs, to enter into supervision agreements. Right now, they're required to have supervision agreements with physicians, and that seems to be pretty outdated. The decisions are paid to. You would think, you know, review documentation on a daily basis and review diagnoses and prescriptions, but in many cases they're just like at the end of the year or the end of the month or whatever, it is just reviewing what's going on in the nurse practitioners practice. And what that has really done has created a professional shortage among providers, particularly in rural areas where they just don't have enough doctors, and there's been resistance among doctors to allow this what they call the SAVE Act, that would update the requirements for advanced practitioners, advanced practice nurse practitioners to be able to go out there, put out a shingle and offer health care treatment. So that's in the short answer. There is support, and my understanding is that the North Carolina Board of Nursing is supportive of it, of that piece of legislation, but it has not made its way through the state legislature. And truly, between that and certificated need, you could really unleash a whole lot more resources in North Carolina's health care system with both of those pieces of legislation. Right now, North Carolina is the most expensive place in the country to get sick, more than New York, more than California. North Carolina has the highest healthcare rates of any state in the country. I when you consider, but we're actually living pretty well. Our cost of living is relatively low, certainly low compared to California and New York, but our health care is high, and a lot of that is there just isn't the competition. Our public policy does not allow the level of competition that we need that will bring prices down and that's something that we need to be thinking about. Our lawmakers need to be thinking about when they go and really confront the damage that certificate of need this and not having the Save Act, not lowing more people go out and serve their communities in the health care space. What that does to the healthcare prices. And that's something that we're going to be talking about a lot as they come into the legislative session. It all gets underway just this week tomorrow, North Carolina lawmakers are returning to rally for the twenty twenty six short session. They're facing a lot of things going on. Is there's a looming Medicaid funding cliff, there's a continued divide even among Republican leadership over taxes and spending priorities. And the biggest question isn't just what they'll do to me. I think one of the things that they really got to talk about is will they stay true to the policies that have driven North Carolina's economic growth over the last decade, A commitment to lower taxes, discipline spending, accountable government. You know, if you're new to North Carolina, the backstory is that in twenty ten, North Carolina voters on a Democrat joint drawn map. I'd add North Carolina voters gave majority control to Republicans in the General Assembly, and that's what we saw a dramatic shift in policy. Start from what was like seven percent income tax rates. We were furlowing teachers, we were in the red all the time as a state. We saw this movement toward lowering taxes, saving more money, restraining spending. All of those things happened over the last decade. So that's the question right now with Senator Phil Berger. Will not be at the gable starting in January did not win as primary. Will the remaining lawmakers be able to maintain that discipline, maintain the link to the successes that North Carolina has seen economically over the last decade. Will they keep that ball moving forward? And truthfully, while I don't like seeing more traffic and higher housing prices, I like the economic development that we have had in North Carolina because it's expanded our tax base, it's given us more money to work with, it's given us the ability to say more to lower taxes and bring more people in. It's a strategy that's worked, and for that, it's not a theory, it's not something that is just economics one oh one, although it reflects them certainly. We've seen it in practice and the growth that we've seen here in North Carolina. Will they continue Do they have the guts to continue that strategy and move forward? There there's some disconnect between the House and the Senate, and even among the Republican caucus, who say, oh, look, I'm a little concerned that there's going to be a revenue forecaster not as bright and shiny as they once were. Revenue forecaster notoriously wrong, by the way, but we want to slow it. We want to we want to slow these tax cuts, and we want to make sure that we're not reducing taxes so much that we have a problem in the future. And that's happening in the House. In the Senate, they're saying, nope, we have seen that this works. We have ended up with a revenue surplus every year, we've been able to save a lot of money for the next hurricane that comes down the path, and we've been able to lower tax. Need to keep moving forward. So that's one of the big questions that's going to be coming into the state legislature as they move forward. The other being a Medicaid funding shortfall. Lawmakers are saying, hey, look, is this system being managed appropriately? Are we rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid? And are there oversight gaps? Is are these cost overruns that we're seeing in North Carolina predictable? Were they preventable? Do we have a problem with the way we're running Medicaid? Because lawmakers are pressing state health officials saying, look, we need some answers before we cover the shortfall. We need some answers on how Medicaid is being run here in North Carolina, and they're saying that this is a core principle government programs must be accountable before they're expanded. If you are also new to North Carolina, you don't know the backstory on Medicaid expansion. The state expanded Medicaid in twenty twenty three to accommodate about seven hundred thousand people who are what they call the Medicaid expansion. They're able bodied, working age people who earned too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid, but their employer doesn't cover health insurance for them, or they don't make enough to buy it off the marketplace, so they are this expansion population, the seven hundred thousand able bodied, working aged adults in that expansion. The deal that they made with the federal government, the Biden administration at the time, was that the federal government pays ninety percent of the cost for this expanded population. The state pays ten percent of the costs. And the Biden administration gave the state billions to cover their ten percent and allowed them to tax hospitals, and the hospitals agreed to this tax to cover that delta, that ten percent, so that it wouldn't come out of our tax space. Well, in that financial off ramp, in that twenty twenty three Medicaid expansion deal, the lawmakers built in and said, hey, look, if this funding formula changes, if the state, if the federal government doesn't cover as much, or we're not allowed to tax the hospitals as much to cover it, the deal is repealed. It is void. And that's where we are right now because the one big beautiful bill may change us to the amount that we can tax hospitals, so it will be repealed. So the question is, and keep in mind, Medicaid expansion is not part of the Medicaid cost overrun that we're seeing. That happened in the. State legislature, but it certainly has stressed our healthcare system. It's added seven hundred thousand people to our healthcare system and more patients and more people going in. So you know, these two things are related, not necessarily causal. So as we go through the state legislature, as you're watching, as you're looking at other news and other headlines, keep in mind that there's a lot going on to this. There's a lot of backstory and Medicaid expansion is a piece of the puzzle as they go through this. So but expansion is the expansion was conditional. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.