Legal Landscapes

“It is estimated that licensing results in a cost, or “dead weight loss” to society of between $34.8 to $41.7 billion per year compared to a labor market without licensing.” – Reason Foundation

The installation of low-voltage landscape lighting is simple and safe. It is virtually impossible to sustain any serious injury from contact with a current below 30 volts. The laws that apply to electrical installations are primarily set and enforced by the states and vary considerably.

In an effort to catalog the applicable laws, I conducted a comprehensive survey of all 50 states. Here are my findings.

Searching for answers
Some states that require electrical licensing don’t exempt low-voltage work in their statutes, but when asked, they say they ignore this work and allow it to be installed by unlicensed individuals. There are also cases where certain types of low-voltage installation are exempt from licensing, such as telecommunications or alarm work, but low-voltage lighting is not mentioned – some such states assume lighting is included in the exemptions; others do not.
Local municipalities may have their own licensing that may or may not affect low-voltage installation. A cataloging of these local laws was beyond the scope of this survey.

Survey results
Of the 50 states, 24 (plus Washington, D.C.) require some form of licensing for low-voltage installation. Of these, 11 have a specialty license for low voltage. These specialty licenses require less training and experience than needed for a master or journeyman’s license. They provide a doable (though uniformly arduous) path for non-electricians to pursue legal installations. One frustration among contractors seeking these licenses is that the required experience and testing is almost entirely focused on indoor electrical work – work that requires learning a great deal of electrical code that never applies to landscape lighting.

The remaining 14 of these 24 states require an electrical contractor, journeyman or master electrician’s license. These states effectively restrict landscape lighting installation to electricians. Green industry professionals may work with these electricians on lighting projects, but the profit potential is greatly reduced.

Trends favor the electricians
Low-voltage landscape lighting is a relatively new profession that has grown tremendously during the last two decades. Nationwide, green industry professionals have embraced lighting, incorporated it into their businesses and established it as a value-added profitable service. This growth has been widespread among the states, even in those states where “technically” the work is not exempt from electrical licensing.

New Jersey is an example of a state where low-voltage installation is not exempt in the statutes. When the electrical laws were written in 1964, no mention was given to landscape lighting (it didn’t exist). Starting in the 1980s, green industry professionals built a low-voltage lighting industry in the state. The State Electrical Board and local inspectors took little notice of low-voltage work and non-electricians were free to install it – until 2007.

In 2007, New Jersey State Electrical started to enforce the electrical laws for low-voltage landscape lighting. Warning letters were sent, fines were issued and local inspectors did drive-by enforcements. The penalty for an unlicensed worker engaged in low-voltage electrical work is up to $20,000 per offense.

This recent enforcement threatens the livelihood of landscape lighting professionals in the state. They now face the prospect of hiring electricians to do the bulk of the work, effectively diminishing profits. In response to the problem, a group of concerned parties formed a landscape lighting task force under the umbrella of the New Jersey Green Industry Council (www.njlawfix.webexone.com). This group is currently working with legislators to amend the electrical laws and exempt landscape lighting from licensing.

Amending laws is a long and expensive task, and the New Jersey effort, while broadly supported by contractors, struggles to gain financial support from the industry. Larger industries have healthy coffers to support legislative change, but landscape lighting has only a handful of major players. Despite aggressive fundraising efforts, only one manufacturer and one distributor have made significant contributions to the effort.

New Jersey is not the only state where landscape lighting professionals are at risk. Nearby Connecticut recently stiffened its laws, as did Florida and several other states. Every state that fails to specifically exempt low-voltage lighting from licensing is at risk of having overly-restrictive licensing come into play. 
 
To license or not to license?
In our survey, New Jersey landscape contractors were asked their views on legislation. While an amendment exempting them from licensing received near unanimous support, half of them said they would like to see a specific low-voltage license similar to those applied in 24 other states.

When asked why they would like such a license, several reasons were given. Most commonly, contractors felt having a license would drive away the low-bidders who do poor work and under-charge. This is essentially an argument for restricting a profession so only a few companies can compete in the market. It fails to recognize bad companies fail. If a skilled and educated professional with a well-run company can’t win out over unskilled, unprofessional companies, then he’s doing something wrong. The best landscape lighting clients are high-income, sophisticated consumers – they recognize a quality company and will choose them every time.

In response to this desire to limit competition, David Beausoleil, CAST Lighting president, says, “Licensing tends to commoditize a profession and makes it more difficult for one company to distinguish itself from another.” He cites the example of electricians: Homeowners tend to assume that one licensed electrician is as good as another.

This commoditization tends to limit what electricians can charge for their services. Landscape lighting, on the other hand, especially in unlicensed states, is a profession where prices can be raised to a great degree, totally dependant on a landscape contractor’s demonstrated skill and experience. Licensing puts all players at the same level and consumers will expect prices to be fairly uniform regardless of other distinguishing factors. Without licensing, companies develop their own distinguishing qualities that they can market to the greatest effect.

In states like Connecticut and Florida, which have adopted restrictive licensing laws, the landscape lighting industry has suffered – fewer companies enter the market, fewer lighting products are purchased and it has become more difficult for licensed companies to expand their markets.

This last point is true because landscape lighting is still an emerging industry, and every new lighting project (even poorly designed ones) stimulate consumer awareness and inspire them to hire someone to light their own homes.
In fact, many good landscape lighting companies get a large proportion of their business replacing poorly designed jobs. In the absence of a healthy number of landscape lighting businesses, many consumers opt to do their own lighting, purchasing inferior products from local home improvement stores.

In conclusion, it is the opinion of this author that licensing for the safe profession of landscape lighting serves only to create unnecessary barriers and restrictions – barriers to enter the profession and restrictions on practicing it.

 The author is communication and marketing director for CAST Lighting, Hawthorne, N.J., and chairman of the New Jersey Landscape Lighting Task Force.