Highlights from our interview with Steve Bruno, deputy executive director at Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.
Lone Star Standard: When was the Department of Licensing and Regulation started and what does the agency do?
Bruno: Like all state agencies, TDLR was created by the legislature. Chapter 51 of the Occupations Code creates the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation and our history goes back over 100 years. We were created in the early 1900s and we’re one of the first and earliest state agencies. We were created in the early 1900s as the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And then we became the Texas Bureau of Labor Standards. And then in the late 1990s, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. And what the law says, if you go and look it up, is that we’re basically the state’s regulatory agency. We don’t have every single regulatory license in the state, but many of them, and, currently, we have 38 programs and those are assigned to us by the Texas Legislature. One thing I always want people to understand is it’s not like we sit around and say, you know, what should we regulate or what shouldn’t we do? Or what does it require to get this license? All of those, and I’m pointing across the street because our office is next door to the Governor’s mansion, and I’m pointing at the Texas capitol. Our state legislature are the ones who decide what laws are going to say and what the programs are going to be that we regulate. Like a lot of agencies, we are overseen by the Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation and the Commission consists of seven members. They are not allowed to have any financial interest in the programs we regulate. And those seven members are appointed by the governor of Texas and confirmed by the Texas Senate.
Lone Star Standard: How does the agency affect everyday Texans?
Bruno: You are affected because you may have to hire an electrician or an air conditioning contractor to make some repairs at your home. And the point of the stature and what we need to carry out is that we want to make sure that the person who’s going out there has a license, meets the requirements, and is qualified for your health and safety. Obviously, electricians can cause fire if they don’t know what they’re doing. Air conditioning contractors, if they don’t know what they are doing in setting up an AC system and setting up the size of the system properly for your home or your business, can have issues that cause economic or health and safety problems down the line. So that’s really it. It’s about protecting public health and safety. A couple of other examples. One of the things we regulate is fuel pumps. When you go to fill up with gas, are you getting the proper amount of gas that the meter says? If you pay for premium gas, is it really premium gas? Those types of things affect people every day. If you go to a shopping center or an office building and you get on an elevator or an escalator. If you need to have your car towed for some reason. If you go to the store and buy what’s called an extended warranty, or in the legal world, what’s called a service contract. For example, you may go to Best Buy and buy a new television, and they’ll say the warranty by this particular manufacturer is two years for this additional fee. You can add 3 or 4 years to that. That’s also something that we regulate. So, there’s an array of things that we’re sort of behind the scenes that consumers might not see every day where we are there to help, and protect the health, safety, and welfare of Texans.
Lone Star Standard: Tell us a bit about TDLRs 5-year strategic plan that was just released this year?
Bruno: It’s 52 pages, very well spaced and we’ve got some pictures and some graphs. What we want to do is tell our story. We want citizens and those that are impacted to be able to see who we are and what we do and how we want to carry out our vision and our mission. One thing, that is my favorite, that we highlight is we run ourselves with some core values. We want to be accountable to Texans. We want to provide excellent customer service. We work together as a team with our licensees to provide the best service. And, so those things are all outlined in our strategic plan. And a couple of things that you’ll see are strategic initiatives. This is at the end of the plan and it’s suggestions to the legislature on things we’ve observed for possible consideration of things they might want to look at in the statutes. For example, one that I’m pretty excited about, from last session, is our electricians program and our air conditioning program. There were some provisions made that created alternative pathways aimed at high school students who may not be going on to college so that when they start high school, by the time they finish, they can be well along in their careers either in the electrician field or the air conditioning field. And those are just two fields.
Steve Bruno is the deputy executive director of the Licensing and Education and Examination Divisions and Customer Service at The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Bruno discusses the role that TDLR plays in the everyday lives of Texans, as well as their new five year strategic plan.
This interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Listen to the full discussion here: https://texas-talks.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-27-steve-bruno.
