Don't Bite Your Fingernails!!!

My Thoughts on the Current Condition of Plumbing in Texas
Master Plumber #M36524

1. Don’t Bite Your Fingernails. This is no time for emotionally charged rhetoric. The plumbing industry is founded on and perpetuated by sound thinking and its application. We protect public safety. We provide the two most foundational elements of any modern society: safe drinking water and sanitary sewage disposal. Our trade is built on logic. We must respond in logic while continuing to do what is best for public safety.
2. Free Markets Work. Good customers will hire good plumbers. Cheap people will hire cheap, unqualified people. While state oversight is helpful, we never needed the government to endorse the quality of our work. Quality plumbers do quality work. Its a simple economic principle. The market will reveal who does quality work and these people will have successful businesses.
3. The 86th Legislature Failed its Citizens. Texans deserve better. The primary role of government is to protect the people. Plumbing oversight is primarily a public safety issue. Most citizens are unaware of the dangers involved with plumbing installations. Cross-connections, carbon monoxide poisoning, potentially explosive water heaters, gas leaks, and medical gas dangers are not on the radar of the average citizen…until its too late. The safety regulations of the plumbing industry are built on the same principles of other laws. That principle is this: One is free to exercise one’s rights as long as that does not take away the rights of another. The government’s responsibility is to protect these rights, especially when citizens are unaware of the threats to their rights. In this way, the 86th legislature failed Texans. 
4. We Are Stronger Together. With approximately 71,000 people registered with the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners we can have a united voice for our trade. While this number includes those who are not interested and those who are in favor of removing the TSBPE, there are still enough of us to take a stand. I am thankful to see many rising up in unity and I will participate for the sake of our trade. We must also think ahead to ways we can work together in a Texas without state plumbing regulation.
5. Plumbing Will Not Be That Much Different. There have always been people doing illegal and substandard plumbing work. It has been beneficial for our industry to have a state board that worked to enforce state plumbing laws. I still want that. However, the free market will correct itself and this political hackery will not remain long term. Even most of those who favored abolishing the TSBPE still realize there is too much at stake to not have some sort of state oversight for plumbing. This is a transitional time but some sort of regulation will be upcoming. As those who know the industry, we must keep the pressure on and make our voices heard in the development of what comes next. 

Obviously I have many other thoughts but hopefully these are helpful at this time. 

Plumb On!

- Richmond Goolsby