Photo by Bill.

Congress often meddles in D.C. affairs—limiting the District’s ability to control its locally raised funds, fully implement cannabis laws, and more, using tools like budget riders and defunding laws to block policy.

This time, though, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) is trying something new: writing legislation to limit the creation of occupational license requirements in the District. It would require the D.C. Council to create a legislative committee or subcommittee to address the issue, and the D.C. Attorney General to create an office dedicated to overseeing occupational boards.

Lee says that these licenses often create insurmountable burdens for people trying to break into new fields.

“In the District, for example, time consuming and often expensive licensing requirements are imposed on would be entry-level interior designers, tour guides, cosmetologists, florists, and pest control workers, to name a few—with little or no legitimate public purpose served. For example, an aspiring interior designer must have six years’ education/experience, pay $925 in fees, and pass an exam to work legally in this field,” Lee says in a statement.

The ALLOW Act, co-sponsored by Never Trump Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE), is supposed to serve as a “model for reform in the states,” but D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton is not having it.

“One of the most adamant proponents of keeping authority within the states, Senator Lee is now seeking to use federal power to undemocratically alter the District of Columbia’s local laws concerning occupational licensing,” said Norton in a statement. “This quintessentially local decision must be made locally, not by politicians who are unaccountable to local residents.”

As WAMU points out, D.C. officials have been debating licensing requirements for various professions, like a failed attempt at regulating personal trainers and implemented rules for tattoo artists. On the flip side, D.C. is the only state-level jurisdiction that doesn’t license landscape architects, which many in the field are in favor of changing, as the Washington Business Journal reported.

Norton isn’t opposed to looking more closely at these requirements, but doesn’t want them implemented by Lee. “If Senator Lee would like a meeting with our mayor and members of the D.C. Council to offer his suggestions, I would be glad to arrange one,” Norton said. “We serve notice, however, that the District is not Senator Lee’s toy to try out his personal model for the states or the District of Columbia.”

ALLOW Act by Senator Mike Lee on Scribd