LARA Living Room
Inside stories and real conversations from the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs. LARA Living Room explores how regulation works, why it matters, and the people making it happen.
LARA Living Room
LARA’s Plan to Cut Red Tape
Explore Michigan’s Cutting Red Tape Report, revealing how LARA is working to reduce licensing barriers, simplify regulations, and help businesses thrive.
View the Cutting Red Tape Report and the Press Release.
Thank you.
Anastasha Osborn:Welcome to a special episode of the LARA Living Room. Today, we're going to be taking a closer look at the Cutting Red Tape Report. And this was a really big initiative from LARA that focused really on reducing barriers to licensure, streamlining regulatory processes, and truly just making it easier for people to do business and serve their communities right here in Michigan. This report is the result of months of hard work and includes nearly 80 recommendations, which were all shaped by feedback from over 16,000 licensees and stakeholder partners across three of our highest volume bureaus. So in this episode, what we're going to be talking about and sharing is how the report came together, what we heard from the public, and what changes we are already making. So you know the drill, fill up your coffee, grab a seat, and get cozy and comfortable because you are now in the LARA Living Room. I'm joined today by four incredible guests who were deeply involved in shaping this work. I'd really love to kick things off by having each of you introduce yourselves. Just go ahead and share your name, your role, and just a quick overview of the work that you do. And let's go ahead and start with you, Courtney.
Courtney Pendleton:Well, thank you for having me here today. I think we're all excited to talk about the LARA Cutting Red Tape. Hello, everyone. My name is Courtney Pendleton, and I have the honor of serving as the Chief Operating Officer for LARA. My role consists of a lot of different things, and luckily, no day ever looks like this. the next. And there's a lot of stuff that goes on in this department. And I help just make sure that it all keeps working. I work directly with our director, Dr. Marlon Brown, with Adam Sandoval, who is our chief legal officer, and then all of the bureaus and agencies across the department. So I get to learn about all the fantastic stuff that we do every single day to serve the people of Michigan.
Andrew Brisbo:I'm Andrew Brisbo. I am the director of the Bureau of Construction Codes in LARA, or BCC as we call it. I've been in state government for about 20 years and with LARA since 2008, and I've worked in five different bureaus and agencies around LARA, so I've been around for quite a while in this department. In BCC, we regulate skilled trades throughout the state, and that includes residential builders, electricians, plumbers, mechanical contractors, elevator contractors, boiler installer repairs, and we also regulate ski areas, carnival amusement safety, and manufactured housing communities. And we adopt codes and set statewide standards for all of these program areas, including residential and commercial construction, elevators, boilers, ski lifts, carnival amusement rides, and manufactured housing communities.
Amy Gumbrecht:I'm Amy Gumbrecht. I serve as the Bureau Director for the Bureau of Professional Licensing here in LARA, otherwise known as BPL. We have the honor of regulating most of the health professions here in the state of Michigan. That is 28 health professions, as well as 13 other professional occupations. Those include accountancy, real estate, cosmetology. So if you have a licensed profession, it's very likely that you deal with BPL on a semi-regular basis. We are lucky to have roughly 185 staff people in in our bureau that review and issue licenses, complete inspections, investigate complaints, initiate and track discipline. So we are a very busy bureau.
Ben Parker:All right. Ben Parker. I'm the licensing division director at the Corporation Securities and Commercial Licensing Bureau. The licensing division oversees the licensing and regulation under 13 different statutes. The Bureau itself has a division that handles all corporations' documents for the state of Michigan. Over one million entities are formed in the state. We have another division called the Securities Division, Securities and Audit, and they handle some of the financial licenses across the state as well as doing audits on funeral homes, cemeteries, and prepaid funeral providers.
Unknown:Okay.
Anastasha Osborn:So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I think it's really important. After we put the report out, we really didn't do much more than just putting the report out there so people knew what it was about. We sent out a press release. We did our due diligence there, but I'm really excited to kind of break this down a little bit further. So I want to start at the beginning just to understand what really led to this initiative. And so Courtney, I'm going to have you just walk us through what sparked the idea for the Cutting Red Tape Report.
Courtney Pendleton:So this all started with our strategic plan for the department and really digging into our key goals. And we have four of them, reducing barriers to licensure, educating before we regulate, providing efficient, effective, and timely services, and enhancing the customer's experience. So as we looked at these key goals, We threw around a bunch of different ideas on how do we achieve these goals? How do we make sure that we're living and breathing our mission, vision, and values for the department and really making sure that we're doing all of our work to the best of our abilities? And one of the ideas that we had was to do a deep dive into the professions that we license and regulate. And that's what sparked this idea. We wanted to look at, do we have any rules regulations processes that might be obsolete that might be out of date and maybe there's new trends in that particular industry that we need to take into consideration and then also our internal processes are there better ways that we can protect people and promote business And so to kick this work off, we decided to start with three different statutes that we work within across the department. So the Michigan Public Health Code, the Michigan Occupational Code, and the Skilled Trades Regulation Act. And focusing on those three statutes alone meant that we were focusing on about 50 different professions that we license and regulate. And that led us to work with the three bureaus that we did on this project, the LARA Bureau of Construction Codes that we call BC Bureau of Professional Licensing that we call BPL and Corporation Security and Commercial Licensing that we call CSCL.
Anastasha Osborn:I wanted to ask you, there was back in 2023, Governor Whitmer had released a letter and it was a call for us to do this work. Can you tell the listeners just a little bit about that letter and then how that shaped our approach here at LARA to do this report itself?
Courtney Pendleton:Thank you so much. What that did was allow us to really take this even further, knowing that we had the governor's support, not only because it tied directly into the key goals that I mentioned in our strategic plan, but also because it played into the governor's priorities, one of those being to cut red tape and ensure that we are streamlining government processes and services.
Anastasha Osborn:Why was it important for LARA to take a proactive role in reducing licensure barriers?
Courtney Pendleton:Thank you so much. can help them be successful in that profession. It also allows us to make sure that we are upholding our mission of protecting people and promoting business. So we like to take a proactive role in reducing barriers.
Anastasha Osborn:Now for this report, LARA surveyed over 16,000 licensees and that's a huge number. So kind of walk me through what did that process look like, not just across the department, but more specifically just those three bureaus?
Courtney Pendleton:I love that we got so many responses to that survey. We kept seeing the numbers climb, which was really incredible. And so what that process looked like for us, first, I want to say thank you to everyone who submitted a response, all our licensees and our industry partners for sharing their opinions and their ideas for reducing barriers to licensure. And we took that very seriously. So the process for us was that we went through all 16,488 responses that we received. We read every single one of them and we were then able to take all of that information and build it into the almost 80 recommendations that you see within that final report. And so the three bureaus, BCC, BPL, and CSCL that were involved in this project broke all of those survey responses down based on the the profession that it was impacting and built that in. And so again, thank you to everyone who provided responses. It was amazing and I think what we got out of that was absolutely incredible and will help reduce those barriers to licensure.
Anastasha Osborn:Andrea, can you share one or two highlights from the Bureau of Construction Code's recommendations?
Andrew Brisbo:Sure. The expansion of licensing through reciprocity is one particularly exciting idea stemming from this project. We solicited feedback from stakeholders in all our program areas, and this idea proved to be a common thread across all the trades. Promoting skilled trades across the state has been a key goal in my time with BCC, so providing opportunities to ease the licensing process for qualified individuals who want to make Michigan home aligns well with our strategic plan. And selfishly, as a bureau that employs over 100 skilled tradespeople, improving the skilled trades pipeline in the state also benefits us from an employer perspective. And we were particularly excited the governor even mentioned this reciprocity in her state of the state address. So we know we're aligned with the executive needs as well. And the other idea is a little more subtle, but I think it'll have a substantial impact. It's encouraging the use of plain language in all of our content used by applicants and licensees, including on applications and through exams. When we're using laws, rules, and codes as our guides, it's often easy to get caught up in the legalese or the technical jargon. And some of it's required in certain contexts, but where it is This isn't essential. We're leveraging tools to analyze the language we use to ensure it's easily understood by all users. It's a simple concept, but we think it'll have a tremendous impact.
Anastasha Osborn:Now, you mentioned being aligned executively, and my next question is going to be, how do the BCC recommendations align with what you're hearing from licensees day to day?
Andrew Brisbo:So the survey we sent to our licensees and other stakeholders really helped reinforce and provide some color to the ideas that have been bubbling up from time to time in different contexts. So we try to engage with our stakeholders regularly. And so some of these things were things we'd heard before, but seeing that survey and seeing the results really helped us understand and provide some details around some of these ideas. We've routinely heard concerns about the demand for skilled tradespeople around the state and that the demand exceeds the supply in general. So providing stakeholders with the opportunity to be a part of the development of these solutions has been very fruitful. From identifying ways to streamline licensing processes to aligning the scope of practice in certain trades to the practical realities of the industry today, the input from those engaged in the trades has been critical as part of that process.
Anastasha Osborn:Amy, what types of feedback really stood out the most from the survey results regarding BPL specifically?
Amy Gumbrecht:You know, the feedback that stood out the most to me wasn't necessarily about a specific topic. Again, since we have so many different professions, it's hard to talk about just one topic because there's so much variation. But just the amount of time that people took to share their thoughts. I think when you publish a survey like this, there's always some question of, well, people actually going to fill it out. If they fill it out, what is that response going to be like? Is it going to be like, Yes, I think things are fine or no, things are terrible, but not, you know, a lot of other detail to that. So I was very pleased to see just the amount of time and nuance that people put into their responses, you know, paragraphs of people saying, you know, here's a change you should make, and here's why, and here's how it impacts me. And those types of comments were just very helpful as we worked on this project, having that context for, we're doing things this way currently, but here's why this professional thinks that maybe we could make this slight change just to make things a little easier on people. So that was a really nice thing to see.
Anastasha Osborn:Were there any surprising patterns or consistent concerns that emerged from BPL licensees?
Amy Gumbrecht:Interesting to see throughout the survey results, again, because we have such a breadth of professions that we're dealing with for, you know, those professions that have continuing education or those that don't. So people, when I'm talking about continuing education, if you aren't aware, most of our professionals have continuing education requirements that they have to complete. And the goal of those is that they have to complete, you know, a certain amount of hours each year to, you know, stay current on their skills in their field, as well as learning new advances in their fields as well. So we have some professions that don't have CE. Most of ours do have CE, continuing education. There's a lot of variety of professionals saying our hours are too much. You also had people saying it's too few. We need more continuing education. You had some professionals saying we don't need continuing education at all. We had professionals saying, no, we don't have it currently, but we should. And here's why. So that was very interesting. The other thing I would say was it was nice. Obviously, we had I think most of the responses to the survey were for BPL. It was interesting to see, because obviously we were working internally on this project as well, seeing how many of the comments we got kind of aligned with some of the recommendations that we were talking about internally. It was really nice to see that the things that we were talking about on a weekly basis in our meetings during this project were also very likely going to be supported by our respondents.
Anastasha Osborn:All right, Ben, what were some of the standout suggestions or changes identified for CSCL?
Ben Parker:There were several standout ideas that I think were presented to us. I do want to mention that for our division, I'm sorry, for CSCL, this report only impacted one of our professions, and that's mortuary science. So mortuary science is the study of funeral directing. And within mortuary science, we have individuals who are licensed. We license the establishment. We license those who are studying to be a future funeral director. And then we also license people who hold a courtesy license in this profession for our surrounding states. So this report really only impacted one of our professions. However, we're using a lot of the ideas in the rest of our licenses as well. Additionally, since this report came out, they've added two new professions into the occupational code that this would have impacted, and that's deceased removal services and deceased refrigeration facilities. CSCL, the licensing division, is kind of a downer. We talk about death all the time, unfortunately. But one thing that really stood out to me was that the licensees, particularly in mortuary science, are very proud of the fact that they are compliant with laws and rules. And they want bad actors within their profession to be held accountable. And they want to see the disciplinary action process done quickly. So a little background. All of our disciplinary actions for mortuary science run through a board. And that board only meets two times a year. So sometimes the small issues can take several months to get resolved. And so this is kind of where we went with their idea of let's make things quicker. So we decided that we were going to implement a citation program. And so citations will now be issued to funeral homes or funeral directors for obvious violations that are found during an inspection or during an investigation. This was already in statute in Article 5 of the Occupational Code, but we have never utilized this option up until this point. So this comment kind of helped push us over this edge, and we see that there's a desire from the industry to hold others accountable. We're also going to use that for our deceased removal services and deceased refrigeration facilities.
Anastasha Osborn:Are there any of the recommendations that were in that report that CSCL has already implemented?
Ben Parker:So we have implemented the citation program. As of June 9th, that is now an option available to our regulation agents. Before we did that, we sent out notifications to the licensees and other stakeholders to let them know of this program being implemented. Additionally, we've worked with the Board of Examiners and Mortuary Science to update the rules that help guide the funeral industry. So those rules have been updated. I think it was as of March 1st. I'm sorry, May 1st. May 1st, those have been updated. We've also set up a subcommittee within the Board of Examiners and Mortuary Science, and they're going to evaluate the rules on a continual basis. And then finally, we've started to review the state jurisprudence exam. And so that's used for entry into the mortuary science profession. But as a result of the comments, that's also something that we're looking into.
Anastasha Osborn:Courtney, as we're kind of closing out, let's talk about what's next. And are there any timelines or phases that we should be aware of with the cutting red tape report?
Courtney Pendleton:Absolutely. So any of the recommendations that are in the report that are focused on processes, those things that we control internally here at LARA are either being worked on right now or some of them are already done and we're really excited to get them in the implementation phase. For any of the rule recommendations that are in there, as far as the next steps, we are looking at some of those changes already, working with the respective boards, our industry partners, and our licensees. And for anyone who might be interested in getting involved in that process, we highly encourage you to do so. During the rural promulgation process, there's ample opportunity for the public to get involved and we like it when people are involved in that process. So that's one way if you're interested to get more involved. And then we look forward to working with the governor and all of our legislative partners on all of those statutory recommendations that are in there. So we've got some really good work ahead of us.
Anastasha Osborn:Can you write for our listeners where they can maybe see updates in terms of just the report and where we are and how things are kind of moving forward?
Courtney Pendleton:So check our website, www.michigan.gov slash LARA. And then when you're there, you can go to the Bureau section and visit BCC, BPL, or CSCL. They've all got links there directly to the report. And then continue to check our social media sites because we'll also be sharing updates on the report. through all of those platforms.
Anastasha Osborn:Thank you so much to Courtney, Andrew, Amy, and Ben for sharing your time, insight, and really the important work happening across LARA to improve how we serve the people and businesses of Michigan. If you're listening and you're curious about what's in the full cutting red tape report, we've actually went ahead and dropped the link in the show notes for you. So take a look, see how your feedback helped shape nearly 80 recommendations, and now watch the move into action. So again, thank you so much for listening to the LARA Living Room. I'm Anastasha Osborn. You're From our living room to yours. See you next time.
