Senate Bill 89 Rubs Massage Therapists The Wrong Way (110% License Fee Increase!)
Arkansas Senate Bill 89 (SB89):
Most professionals i.e. Doctors, Nurses, Technicians etc. have a professional license renewed yearly with fees, Continuing Education classes and medical examinations that have to be accomplished before renewal.
Senate Bill 89 (SB89) is before Arkansas Legislation right now. The bill makes big changes to the way licenses are renewed and fees are paid for Licensed Massage Therapists in Arkansas. Also, there are changes in the ways of operating business for me and my colleagues.
SB89 Arkansas Senate Bill 89 In Numbers:
(2008 vs. 2009)
LISC. RENEWAL FEE:
$30/yr vs. $120/Bi-yearly
CONTINUING EDUCATION:
$120 yr vs. $420 Bi-yearly
(6HRS yr vs. 18HRS Bi-yearly)
TB TEST:
$5 yr vs. $10 Bi-yearly
****NEW FEES****
MASSAGE THERAPY CLINIC REGISTRATION FEE:
$75 YEARLY
QUICK CARD: (miniature license card)
$10 YEARLY
**other fees are changed in the new bill, but do not apply to license renewal**
In a nutshell,
FOR RENEWAL:
2008: $155.00/yr
2009: $635.00/Bi-yearly or $323/yr
This is a 110% INCREASE.
In this unstable economy, SB89 is unrealistic.
I have seen a slight drop in my business (3hrs less a month) and have colleagues across the state who have seen a significant drop in business over the last year due to the flailing economy. In our opinion, the fees should be LOWERED instead of being RAISED 110%.
I encourage all of my friends who are against this bill to call or email your Arkansas State Senator, or the Lead Sponsor of the bill Terry Smith and tell them you are against SB89. If you are out-of-state, grew up in Arkansas, or still have family roots in Arkansas, I encourage you to call as well. The bill goes before the board on Thursday, January 27th.
Thank you very much for your time and support!
-Michael R. Cary LMT
At Ease LMTC
1113 N. Madison Ave.
El Dorado, AR 71730
(870) 310-2344
Most professionals i.e. Doctors, Nurses, Technicians etc. have a professional license renewed yearly with fees, Continuing Education classes and medical examinations that have to be accomplished before renewal.
Senate Bill 89 (SB89) is before Arkansas Legislation right now. The bill makes big changes to the way licenses are renewed and fees are paid for Licensed Massage Therapists in Arkansas. Also, there are changes in the ways of operating business for me and my colleagues.
SB89 Arkansas Senate Bill 89 In Numbers:
(2008 vs. 2009)
LISC. RENEWAL FEE:
$30/yr vs. $120/Bi-yearly
CONTINUING EDUCATION:
$120 yr vs. $420 Bi-yearly
(6HRS yr vs. 18HRS Bi-yearly)
TB TEST:
$5 yr vs. $10 Bi-yearly
****NEW FEES****
MASSAGE THERAPY CLINIC REGISTRATION FEE:
$75 YEARLY
QUICK CARD: (miniature license card)
$10 YEARLY
**other fees are changed in the new bill, but do not apply to license renewal**
In a nutshell,
FOR RENEWAL:
2008: $155.00/yr
2009: $635.00/Bi-yearly or $323/yr
This is a 110% INCREASE.
In this unstable economy, SB89 is unrealistic.
I have seen a slight drop in my business (3hrs less a month) and have colleagues across the state who have seen a significant drop in business over the last year due to the flailing economy. In our opinion, the fees should be LOWERED instead of being RAISED 110%.
I encourage all of my friends who are against this bill to call or email your Arkansas State Senator, or the Lead Sponsor of the bill Terry Smith and tell them you are against SB89. If you are out-of-state, grew up in Arkansas, or still have family roots in Arkansas, I encourage you to call as well. The bill goes before the board on Thursday, January 27th.
Thank you very much for your time and support!
-Michael R. Cary LMT
At Ease LMTC
1113 N. Madison Ave.
El Dorado, AR 71730
(870) 310-2344
posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Friday, January 30, 2009
13 Comments:
I bet Dan Greenberg would support setting the license fee to zero.
I believe he would. He may not even want their to be a license in order to practice- a true small government position.
You should not have to have a license for anything. Earth got along without them for thousands of years. We didn't need them then and we don't need them now. They are just a tool for fascists.
Nonsense. They are a tool that fascists can use, yes, but they are also a tool that free people can use to minimize the occurrence of disease and fraud among themselves.
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Our problems are with tax-and-spend legislators who pay no regard to the constitution. Congratulations, Arkansas, on electing a whole slew of them to the House last election.
You both have valid points guys. Maybe their should be a government license, but not against the law to do business WITHOUT the government license, so long as your customers know. That way if someone wants to trade with a person who has met the government standards they can, and if they want to do business with someone else it is NOT A CRIME!
I don't have a problem with license fees, provided they are reasonable. It's a way to keep the charlatans and fast-buck con-artists from defrauding people. You may say the professions should police themselves, and they do to some extent, but historically, particularly the medical profession, they haven't done a very good job of doing so.
Now, continuing education (CE)is a different question. The bureancrats say it's a way to ensure practicing professionals stay abreast of new developments in their field, but it also serves as a way for people who offer the classes to make money by charging for the classes. Also, pharmacists must acquire 30 hours of CE every 2 years, but they can't carry any extra hours over from a one 24-mo. period to the next. In essence, what that means is that the profession says CE is important to stay current and you must get it in order to keep your license, but if you happen to get a few extra hours, those aren't important enough to count and are discarded. It's a classic case of bureaucratic hypocrisy. Doctors, nurses, PTs, RTs, XRTs, lawyers, realtors, architects & accountants, et al, must also acquire a certain number of CE hours each year, and some of those do allow carry over.
Top Hat: I also congratulate Arkansas for electing people who are not only tax-and-spend, but who will continue to keep Arkansas at #50 in everything: education, jobs, highways, health, economic growth and more. It shouldn't be too much longer before we hit #51, behind Puerto Rico.
The State Agencies and Govt'l Affairs Committee-Senate, will hear SB89 tomorrow (Tuesday, 2/3/09) at 10:00am. I urge those who oppose this bill to contact the board members of the committee at the information below.
These are the Senators on the Governmental Affairs Committee who will hear the bill (SB89) tomorrow:
Sen. Steve Faris, Chair: 501-865-3333
Sen. Gilbert Baker, Vice Chair: bakerg@arkleg.state.ar.us 501-327-8653
Sen. Ed Wilkinson: 479-996-4171
Sen. Steve Bryles: bryless@arkleg.state.ar.us 870-762-1365
Sen. Kim Hendren: hendrenk@arkleg.state.ar.us 479-787-6500
Sen. Randy Laverty: 870-446-5005
Sen. Bobby Glover: cnhc@juno.com 870-552-7150
Sen. Bill Pritchard; pritchardb@arkleg.state.ar.us 479-442-8611
The problem is that if X requires a license then you don't have a right to X.
Blacks Law Dictionary Defines a License as "The permission by competent authority to do an act which without such permission, would be illegal."
In other words, Marriage is illegal unless the local authority grants you the privilege as they see fit.
Of course they would never abuse there power, right? Except the reason the colonies required licenses in the first place was to prevent white people from marrying black people.
When you open the Driving Manual from most states the first thing it says is "Driving is a privilege not a right"
That might be fine for some people but I would prefer it if it was a right. The reason it is not is because it requires a license.
I just can't get behind the idea that any minuscule amount of safety or protection is enough to justify taking away rights and replacing them with privileges.
I think you should have the right to get married, fix TVs, be a barber or an architect or anything else you want to be without having to ask permission. Remember there are plenty of fraudulent electricians out there. Just because they have a license doesn't mean they are not liars.
"To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything." - Friedrich Hayek
Agreed, Chuck!
Even if you believe, as do I, that such licenses are often useful and needful, there's no reason why a licensor (i.e., the state) should charge the licensees more, as a whole, than that required to recover the costs involved in overseeing a license program covering a given industry.
And I find it hard to believe that the cost of overseeing massage therapy has skyrocketed upwards of 110% since they were last adjusted/created. Notwithstanding, this is not the best economy in which to significantly raise taxes.
So, we see that the state is once again simply going about its usual business-- not serving the people, but figuring out new and improved ways of parting us from our hard-earned dollars.
To Anon above, you don't have to have a license to get married. You have to have a license if you want tax breaks for being married. For other benefits (e.g. hospital visitation rights, joint ownership, inheritance, etc.) there are other forms of suitable legal recognition which do not require licenses. And, yes, I'm one who would like to limit those driving on public roads to some degree, as it's quite dangerous enough-- though people should be free to drive drunk down their respective driveways all they want!
Once again, it isn't the concept of licenses that is bad, it's the current administration of licenses as brought to us by the rotten Republicrat/Demolican political system.
Thanks, Top Hat, and agreed as well. Some state agencies are cash-funded, which means that the license fees they charge and financial penalties they invoke for infractions are sufficent to cover their operating costs; other state agencies need additional taxpayer funding. G&F operated for decades solely on license fees (& fines) until our illustrious Gov. Huckabee went out and campaigned for a 1/8 cent sales tax increase. It generates approx. $50 million/year, of which G&F gets about 40%. And you are right, the 110% Massage Therapist fee increase probably can't be justified by a corresponding increase in their operating costs.
Anonymous, I too, find it difficult to accept that driving is a privilege and not a right. After all, it was private industry that produced the automobile, and money from private citizens funds building of highways. However, there are a lot of idiots running loose out there that spoil it for the rest of us. Mac Johnson puts it best as follows:
"Gun control, mandatory retirement "insurance", helmet laws, and a whole slew of other traffic, financial, and health laws are based on the idea that a lot of people are idiots. And this idea is fundamentally true: a lot of people are idiots. But they should be identified and addressed as individuals. The rest of us should be left alone.
The nanny state philosophy of limiting the freedom of the whole population to protect it from the excessive stupidity of a few imbeciles seeks to create a "Nerf World" in which we're all denied sharp objects and solid food so that the world is safe for free range dullards. One's intelligence, common sense, motivations and morality will no longer matter because none of us will have the capability of deciding. It's a world vision that seeks to achieve through the poor judgment of government the world that every child believes God should have created: a world in which nothing bad can happen."
Anonymous, while I lean towards believing that driving is a right, and not a privilege, for the reasons cited above, I prefer not to have some Bo Duke-wannabe idiot plow into me and/or my family at 100mph on a PUBLIC road. Thus, I can live with licensing, and traffic & speed limit laws. The Bo-Duke wannabe can do whatever he wishes on his own private property, drive 100mph, jump bridges, anything, provided he doesn't ask me to subsidize his hospital/doctor bills when he cracks up his General Lee and has to have surgery, an organ transplant, ICU care, etc. Nor do I want to subsidize some idiot who didn't save and plan for retirement b/c he spent everything on booze & smokes, lottery tickets, vacations, generally having a good time, and other frivolities, but I can nonetheless live with Social Security so long as he's willing to live on that and that alone. The problem is, Congress will let him not only get Social Security, but also housing, food, health care, and perhaps transportation, all paid for by the taxpayers.
Chuck that quote was really profound.
There is one guy here who knows more about the specifics of this issue than any of us- Micheal Cary is in the business.
Just an update that Senate Bill 89 has been withdrawn by committee and withdrawn by the author Terry Smith. Thank you again to those who called and voiced their opinion against this bill!
Here is the link to the bill:
http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/2009/R/Pages/BillInformation.aspx?measureno=SB89
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