The House Regulatory Reform Committee heard testimony on a pair of cosmetology licensing bills that would let an accredited cosmetology school operate a secondary facility for theory instruction without obtaining a full new school license.

Representatives Regis and Liberati described the bills as updates to fee structures and licensing rules. Representative Liberati said HB4693 "changes the licensing fees, that haven't been changed in quite a while" and that the cosmetology community "came to orm on changing the fee structure." Representative Regis explained HB4692 would allow a "secondary facility" so a school at capacity would not have to build an entirely separate school for classroom-based theory instruction.

Owners and administrators from cosmetology schools described practical consequences. David Desjanais, owner of Michigan College of Beauty in Troy, told the committee that branch campuses or "additional premises" had been acceptable practice for roughly 80 years until rules and legal interpretations changed about eight years ago. Desjanais said the requested change would allow a school to open a "branch campus classroom only, theory only, in a matter of 2 months for a tenth the cost of what it costs to actually open up a brand new school." He said opening a fully licensed second school now would require "at least a million dollars" and a year of time for building plans, permits and approvals.

Stacy Wells, a multi-campus owner/operator, explained federal and accreditor consequences: the Department of Education issues OPE IDs that tie institutions to outcome rates and to federal student aid participation. Wells said forcing duplicative registration for what she described as a single educational program could create separate outcome rates and separate accreditation burdens and "the cost to actually facilitate education" would be millions and "burdensome." "It really doesn't make a lot of sense either because it's not truly a different school," she said.

Committee members asked clarifying questions about cost and timeline; no committee vote on these measures was recorded in the transcript excerpt.

Support on the record included a witness card from Paige Fultz representing LARA (the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs), which the clerk read as "does not speak, supports the bill."