Want to get a job as a boiler inspector? You’ll have to pay a $150 licensing fee and meet the qualifications the state mandates to get your license.

Want to be a manicurist? You’ll need to go through a criminal background check first.

Manufactured housing installers must have completed a training program. Professional solicitors must put up a $25,000 real estate bond.

Maine has the third highest number of jobs requiring a professional license by the state, according to a recent study by The Reason Foundation, a California-based Libertarian nonprofit think tank focused on “individual liberty and free markets.”

Adam Summers, policy analyst for the foundation, identified 134 professions in Maine requiring a license. This falls short of only California, with 177, and Connecticut, with 155, and just above New Hampshire, with 130.

States with the lowest numbers were Missouri, with 41, Washington, with 53, and Kansas, with 56.

Professions unique to Maine – with few or no other states requiring licenses – include: Ambulance drivers (not including emergency medical technicians); energy auditors; boiler operators, makers and inspectors; credit analysts; dental laboratory technicians; dietetic technicians; extraction workers; farm workers for farm and ranch animals; fire inspectors, health care support workers; log graders and scalers; medical records and health information technicians; and nursing instructors and teachers, postsecondary.

Doug Dunbar, assistant to the commissioner in the Department of Professional and Financial Regulation, which oversees licensing, pointed out that all of these professions except one – interpreter for the deaf – were created before 1995.

The Legislature enacted guidelines for a review of any new licensing requests in 1995, stating that the reason a license should be created is to protect the public.

There have been many requests, but the only profession approved was interpreter for the deaf.

“The Legislature made it clear through the sunrise review that the principal and purpose of a license is to protect the public, whether the license will help to enhance public safety,” Dunbar said.

Sen. Lynn Bromley, D-South Portland, is a chairwoman of the Legislature’s Business, Research and Economic Development Committee, which oversees the licensing process.

“It’s ironic,” Bromley said. “Our job (when it comes to) licensing an activity or profession is to determine if there’s a risk to the public. The people that come to us are usually (from) the profession themselves.”

Sometimes they want a way to set themselves apart from the rest, under the impression that the government’s seal of approval will help improve business.

One year, cosmetologists wanted a separate license from barbers. It was deemed not an issue of public safety.

The regular barber license covered the general safety concerns. Beyond that, “If you have a bad haircut, I don’t think this is a problem for government to care about,” Bromley said.

Summers said many of the laws are proposed more in the special interest rather than the public’s.

“It requires people to seek permission of the government to work in the occupation of their choosing,” Summers said. “They should be free to select the occupation that they want to work in without having to seek that permission.”

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