The next step up from punching bag is a sparring partner, which after years of rhetorical assault should be a welcome improvement.
The target is the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which more than earned its bad reputation over several decades of – to use a kind word – inefficiency.
From 2019 through 2022, applications for licensure in one of the 130-plus regulated career fields increased 15% to about 104,000 – many of which came in on paper because the agency was struggling to use its 1990s computer technology. One person speaking at a September 2023 hearing said he’d only seen things worsen over almost 25 years.
That came a month after Assistant House Minority Leader Jackie Haas, R-Bourbonnais, and 24 other House Republicans signed a letter regarding the plight of applicants seeking behavioral health job licenses. The letter accused IDFPR of losing applications, lagging responses and inadequate communications, a triple whammy for a perpetually understaffed career field.
Haas cited providers reporting an applicant seeking to be a clinical social worker who “was actually told to stop calling” the IDFPR about her lost paperwork, someone who waited six months for approval to take a required test and another who simply couldn’t get anyone to pick up the phone.
These and countless other stories stand in stark contrast to Wednesday when the only news coming out of a House Health Care Licensing Committee was positive: the new Comprehensive Online Regulatory Environment is functioning properly. The first of six rollout phases is completed, and although just a handful of professions are live, lawmakers and IDFPR officials act like everything is on track for all license types to be incorporated by the end of summer, according to Capitol News Illinois.
In addition to adding career fields, the agency is analyzing application efficiency so hopefully, each successive process is more seamless. Later phases include things like making sure the public can more easily file complaints against licensees, an acknowledgment that the entire agency will benefit from streamlines and upgrades and not just the application side.
Time as a punching bag was earned. If every status report includes good news about fixing old systems, that leaves breathing room for the sparring partner phase. In that context, lawmakers can have breathing room to reevaluate if every career under the IDFPR umbrella truly needs licensing while also considering if the licensing process is so onerous as to create an imbalance between consumer protection and business efficiency.
The government should never give itself more responsibility than it can manage or afford. Neither should it erect insurmountable barriers to employment, especially in fields where labor demand outstrips supply.
A truly modern, efficient licensing agency is the goal. Motion in that direction is encouraging.
• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.
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