Earmark Podcast | Earn Free Accounting CPE

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Shelly Weir: [00:00:00] Respectfully when you're in the same bill with like the hairdressers. And trust me, I love my colorist that covers my grays every so often, but not the same thing, right? As a CPA or as an engineer.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:14] Are you an accountant with a continuing education requirement? You can earn free Nasba approved CPE. For listening to this episode, just visit earmarked.app in your web browser, take a short quiz and get your certificate. Hey everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm Blake Oliver. Joining me today is Shelly Weir, president and CEO of the Florida Institute of CPAs. For the past two years, f I CPA has been fighting legislation that would have eliminated Florida's Board of Accountancy, wiped out CPE requirements, and paved the way to dismantle CPA licensure entirely. And they beat it twice. And in all that time, Shelly hasn't given a single live interview about it until now. This is an exclusive. Shelley, welcome to the show.

Shelly Weir: [00:01:06] Thank you so much, Blake. I appreciate you for having me. I'm excited to chat.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:10] Shelley. When I heard about this, what was going on in Florida, I was really surprised because it hasn't made it out into the the national press. It's been very quiet. But this is a big deal. This legislation that you've been dealing with in Florida and over these past months, you haven't given any interviews. You've turned down reporters. And I'm curious why. It's an honor to have you here on the show. I'm just curious why you have stayed quiet about this for so long, and why is now the right time to talk about it?

Shelly Weir: [00:01:49] No, thanks for asking that question. It's certainly not because we didn't want to talk about it. Right. But I think the answer to that question is twofold. First and foremost, we were head down, working as hard as we could to make sure that we protected the profession. I mean, months and weeks of no sleep, time away from family, the whole thing. And so at the end of the day, as you know, Blake, there's so many, so many hours in the day, you got to be able to prioritize time. We were working with the political trade press media, especially those that were based in Tallahassee, where legislators were the audience. So a lot of the trade press journals for legislative purposes, we were we were heavily involved in making sure we got our message out there. But to your point, to the general public, we were very careful because we didn't want to create a panic, um, amongst the profession. And we certainly didn't want to present in any capacity anything that would not be fully unified messaging to be able to effectively defeat the proposal that had been laid on the table in Florida. So I've been eager to chat about it. I get the question all the time, why? What's going on, all those things? So I'm looking forward to today.

Blake Oliver: [00:03:05] And I am happy to have you on to talk about this. This bill would have had devastating consequences for the CPA for the accounting profession. Can you walk me through what the bill actually proposed and like, what would have happened if it had passed?

Shelly Weir: [00:03:24] Yeah, absolutely. So in Florida specifically, this really started to pick up momentum several years ago. Um, anytime you have a piece of legislation that is this significant, there are normally signals that it's coming. There's chess pieces that get put onto the chess board. And so it's our job as lobbyists to both see the field clearly, but also start working with legislators to prepare accordingly. So we had known, and I had been talking to my own society board about this, as well as the national entities for a couple of years before the bill actually was filed. Um, it did look a little bit different than what we initially thought it might look like, but the spirit and the core function of what they were trying to do was filed. So if we flash forward to early April of 2025, the bill was filed. So Blake, just very quick civics lesson in Florida. We have legislative session every year for 60 days. So for 60 days, it's fast and furious. That's when you get bills passed or you don't. And then the following year, rinse and repeat. So this was the 2025 legislative session the first week of April. About halfway through those 60 days, the bill dropped and it was a behemoth 550 page bill.

Shelly Weir: [00:04:48] We were not the only profession in the bill. It was ourselves, the architects, the engineers, the veterinarians, the realtors, the harbor pilots, which are really important in Florida and a host of other professions, all with the same goal of eliminating their regulatory board, including our board, the Board of accountancy, eliminating all continuing education requirements, and setting a path for a next step. That would be the complete elimination of the education requirements for licensure altogether. So everything we've spent the last few years talking about relative to 120 and 150 would have gone away. Um, it would have just been license being awarded based on either work experience only or passing an exam. And again, that was an across the board approach. I'll shorten, um, the 2025 story and we can get into that in a little bit in terms of how we were able to save the board, but we only had a couple of months to get ready for the 2026 legislative session. It came very, very fast, and we knew we'd be seeing the bill again. And we did. And it came back again. And so that's why when you say we've defeated it twice, um, we had to face it down twice over the past two sessions back to back.

Shelly Weir: [00:06:08] So what would have happened if this bill passed? That's the other question that we get a lot. There certainly is like a little bit unknown. Right. We've never had this happen in the profession before. And I think a lot of our peers that were in this bill, the engineers, the architects, etc., are in the same boat. The bottom line for us is that we were never able to get the right kind of assurance or guarantee that the next step after this wasn't going to be the complete elimination of the license altogether. Um, whether or not that was the intent, fine. Um, but whether the license would be eliminated or it would be so degraded that it carried very little value. Either one of those things is a massive concern that would have been more of the the long term. In the short term. There was massive risk to it breaking our mobility infrastructure and our system of commerce, which I know you and I will probably chat through as we go through today. So you're talking about an immediate impact on day one of that happening. But the longer term concerns were certainly high on our radar through all of this.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:23] What was the motivation for this bill? Like who was behind it? Why? Why do this?

Shelly Weir: [00:07:30] So I want to say this at the onset, this is very much a bipartisan issue. Deregulation broadly is bipartisan. Obviously in Florida we are very red leaning right now, but we are seeing this in blue leaning states as well. For the Republicans, specifically on the red side of the aisle, they're looking for something called free market enterprise. It is this ideology that licensure creates too many barriers to entry. Too much red tape. There's too much government in your back pocket. Um, and they want the consumers to have more freedom, more freedom of choice. And ultimately what they want is more people to move to Florida, make it easier for people to get to work in Florida. And of course, more businesses to move to Florida. Now, if we were living in a blue state or maybe a purple state like yours, um, the common thread between both parties is workforce. The Democrats are looking at this more from an access and equity perspective. If there are too many barriers in place, that creates a limitation there. But the common thread is workforce. Both parties want to ultimately bolster the workforce. So if you can take your CPA hat off for a moment, which I know is hard to do, you can understand where they were coming from on this. Obviously, we have concerns about the particular application. But not all. Deregulation is bad and scary and ugly. There's a lot of deregulation proposals that frankly are profession and our license would be highly supportive of. We don't want to be a barrier to entry, right? We're the champions of efficiency. Cpas are paid a lot of money to help make businesses more efficient and more profitable. So there's a lot of common ground that can be found with this. This particular proposal was the most extreme version that the profession had seen.

Blake Oliver: [00:09:33] It passed the house very quickly. It sounds like the battle was then in the Senate. Yes. So, yes. Walk me through how you lobbied in this bill or against this bill. How did how did you, uh how did you stop it?

Shelly Weir: [00:09:53] Okay. So, um, every state's a little bit different in how you can introduce a piece of legislation and get it passed. But in Florida specifically, in order to pass a bill, you have to have it passed both the House and the Senate chambers. You have to have a bill in both of those chambers to to get it passed. So we knew early on that our fight and to save the board was was going to be on the Senate side. It moved extremely fast through the House. Blake, in 2025. I'm going from memory here, but I'm 99% sure that I have this correct. But from the time that the bill was introduced until it passed the House floor with 18 dates, so 18 days, it flew through three different committees, went to the House floor for a vote, and then got sent over to the Senate. That is how fast and furious this went. And it was very, very similar in 2026. So how were we successful in saving the board? I will try to summarize two years of work in a short answer, but, uh, I'll first just touch on the resources that it took to be successful. So we had nine lobbyists registered to the FICP account. We have nine lobbyists on our account every year. This is not new. We have four in-house lobbyists that are on staff at F AICPA, myself included, and we have an external lobbying firm that we've worked with for 25 years.

Shelly Weir: [00:11:17] That's amazing. So among those lobbyists, you have years and years and years of established rapport and relationships with legislators that come in handy in these times. We also had two different public affairs firms helping us craft the right story in the political trade journals to make sure that we were getting our messaging out in the media. We had voter polling projects trying to study how voters felt about these issues and being able to leverage that from a lobbying perspective. Obviously, we did a ton of member activation for Ficpa members. We had our members writing letters, making phone calls coming to Tallahassee. Um, my favorite part of that whole process was we went out and we found, um, CPAs in our membership and across the state that had personal relationships with most of the members of the Florida House and the Florida Senate. And we leveraged those relationships to be able to make our points, because hearing from a lobbyist is very different than hearing from, say, your own CPA on this issue. So when I tell you, we found college roommates, sisters, people that went to church together, anything you can imagine. We had a CPA locked and loaded to work with us, with each key member of the Florida House and Senate. So that's kind of from a resource perspective, from an approach. We really took two paths that worked together.

Shelly Weir: [00:12:49] Blake. So the first one was really leaning on the commerce argument. If you think about what I just said in terms of what the legislators are seeking here less red tape, less bureaucracy. They certainly don't want more red tape and more bureaucracy. Right. They want people to be able to work freely across state lines and for businesses to flourish. Who doesn't want that? And so we started talking to them about our system of mobility and practice privileges because it is highly unique. We have what just about every other profession wants to have in that system of open border, cross state commerce. And that puts the power in the hands of the consumer to be able to choose what CPA they want to work with, regardless of where they live and work. Now, all that being said, I know that our mobility system is not perfect, Blake. That no system is no profession is, but what we have is far superior. And so when we started talking to the legislators about if you do this, you're now going to actually create more red tape for us, more walls. Florida's going to be at a disadvantage. That's not what you want. That argument landed really, really well, and it was brought up a lot in committee hearings when the legislators were talking about the pros and cons of whether or not to keep the CPAs in this bill or pass the bill at all.

Shelly Weir: [00:14:18] The other thing that we did, which I would encourage every state society, every state board to think about doing, is there's a lot of common ground that can be found in the deregulation conversation with legislators that are seeking to deregulate. Not all deregulation is bad. I mean, Blake Pathways is a form of deregulation. We as a profession worked together to add an additional pathway to licensure that emphasized work experience to offer students choices. And we all rallied around that to support it. So we really asked ourselves before the bill even dropped. Where can we and how can we, as a license, be more efficient while still upholding the integrity of our license and obviously protecting the public? And so we did a lot of targeted modernization. We looked at all of our rules, all of our processes, from how someone gets a reciprocal license to how mobility works to all of these things. And we put together a piece of legislation that significantly streamlined our licensure processes, again, while upholding the integrity and protecting the public. And that was extremely well received because we were the only profession in this particular bill that had taken a moment to self-reflect and taken a moment to modernize and try to see where we could find common ground that gave, frankly, both sides a win. And that was really our approach.

Blake Oliver: [00:15:55] We are in a unique spot as accountants, as CPAs, in that we are champions of business, and business tends to benefit from deregulation in general. I think we can agree on that. But we are also champions of regulation in the sense that our license is regulated and that exists to protect the public. So it's, uh, it's kind of threading a needle there, isn't it, in terms of how you respond to this kind of threat?

Shelly Weir: [00:16:25] That is the actual definition of what we did. Blake, have you ever seen Top Gun Maverick with Tom cruise the latest Top Gun?

Blake Oliver: [00:16:32] Is that the latest one I have not. No.

Shelly Weir: [00:16:34] Oh my gosh. Blake. Okay, well, you have to go watch it. Go watch it this weekend. But there's a scene in Top Gun Maverick. And now every time you watch that movie, you'll think of me. But they have the equivalent of what was the volleyball scene in the original movie? They're playing football in the new version, and they're playing something called dogfight football. So they're playing offense and defense at the same time. So they're throwing the football, trying to score a touchdown at the same time that they're trying to like block and defend these giant linebackers, if you will, from coming after them and scoring. And that is the definition of what we've been doing over the past 12 months, is you have to thread the needle so carefully that you don't want to be seen as the agent of no, I don't ever want to legislator to have us walk into the door and have them be like, oh my God, here come the CPAs again. They're going to complain about X, Y, and Z, or they're not going to want us to do this. They're not going to try to work with us. And that is not the approach. But again, I go back to as a license, as a profession, we are the efficiency experts. And so if you can take a moment and just go, okay, what is it that they're trying to do? Granted, I don't agree with this particular application, but there's a lot that we can agree on here. And if both sides can come to a place where it's great for us, it's great for them, that's a win for for everyone. But it's a tough needle to thread.

Blake Oliver: [00:17:56] So let's talk about that. The areas where we can meet in the middle and compromise with deregulation efforts. What what do you see going forward in Florida and perhaps in other states where there's this type of conflict going on or this type of debate going on? What do you see CPAs being able to offer or change from the way we're doing things now?

Shelly Weir: [00:18:22] Now? Great question. So I think at the granular level, we have to look at our model rules, our model statute, how all of those have been applied in each state. So I'm going to give you an example. Like, um, one of the things that we did is we don't have reciprocity here. We call it licensure by endorsement. But for purposes of conversation, it's reciprocity. And when you look at Florida statute right now, there's like nine different steps and nine different things that someone like yourself, if you wanted to take your Arizona license and get licensed in Florida would need to look at in order to get a reciprocal licensure. Now, obviously, the longer that you've been licensed and working without having any dings on your record, the easier it is. But why do we need nine steps? Why can't we just say, okay, if they have a license in good standing from a board of accountancy that has a regulatory board, do we need to look under the hood and go through all of these different steps? For example, do we need to look at this person's college transcript to see that they've taken this particular course, um, that we have deemed necessary that only helps people get to work easier and faster and lowers barriers. But if we do it in the right way, and if we do it collectively together so that we know we're upholding the integrity of the license, we can find things like that all day long. That'll make us better. Um, CPE is another one, and I'm sure you and I will talk about that soon. But there's lots of opportunities and we absolutely should leverage what we just did as a profession with pathways to our advantage, because I don't know of very many professions that took a look in the mirror and went, it's time for us to modernize and have all of these state societies work together collectively to advance it as fast as we have.

Blake Oliver: [00:20:22] That's a really good point. I mean, we have, as a profession, already been making moves on a national scale with all these different states working together to streamline the education requirement. And so was describing that. Was telling that story helpful to you in in your discussions with senators?

Shelly Weir: [00:20:41] Very much so, because think about it again, one of the components of the bill was, hey, do we really need to have education requirements for licensure or can we prioritize work experience and passing the exam? Their argument was that students learn more on the job than they do in the classroom. Now, I'm not here to make that argument. That was their argument. And again, when you've got 25 different licenses involved in the same bill, not all things are created equal. But respectfully, when you're in the same bill with like the hairdressers and trust me, I love my colorist that covers my grays every so often, but not the same thing, right? As a CPA or as an engineer. So when you can go to them and say, hey, we agree with you, we agree that we should give more choices, there should be freedom of choice. We can offer a pathway that prioritizes work experience. And it's not an or, it's an and let's work together. That landed very, very well again, because it meets what they're trying to do while upholding our system of commerce and the integrity of our license.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:49] Is there any particular moment from the past few years that sticks with you in this fight?

Shelly Weir: [00:21:56] Um, not for probably not for a good reason, but probably the single toughest day of my career was the last day of legislative session last year in 2025. So, um, in Florida, what happens, Blake, is because we have a 60 day session, any bills that are not passed by midnight on that 60th day automatically die. You have to reintroduce them if you want to pass them in a future session. The only exception is if the presiding officers, both the Senate President and the speaker of the House, agree that, hey, we need to extend legislative session for any number of reasons or call a special session. These particular bills will still be under consideration. So in last year's session, again, moving very, very fast in those final weeks of session, um, the the bill had already passed the House we were hanging on for dear life to prevent it from passing in the Senate. And so I was standing in what's called our rotunda and the Florida Capitol, and the House floor was on this side of me, and the Senate floor was on this side of me. And when I tell you, Blake, we were literally physically pulling senators off the floor and just doing everything we could. I had every single CPE A that personally knew one of the senior members of the Senate calling and texting and just physically pulling them aside and going, don't do this. And standing in the hallway, we have an amazing CPA senator. His name is Senator Joe Gruder, a senior member of our Senate hearings, chair of the RNC. I'm sure many people know, Joe, just the staunchest advocate for the profession. And just quite literally, while the realtors are all lined up over here and the engineers are over here, I'm like, if there's one lifeboat, I'm getting on it. Good luck to you people. I could just do what I can so that one will always stay in my mind. And it was a long day. They went all the way to midnight, Blake. All the way to midnight that day, so we did not know for sure if we were safe until very late in the evening.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:01] So you mentioned reciprocity as one area where Florida can can modernize. Are there any other areas of licensure where you think we can modernize and streamline, either in Florida or just more broadly on a national basis?

Shelly Weir: [00:24:20] Yeah, I mean, listen, I think regardless of all this legislative stuff that has happened, we need to lead by example as a profession, right? And we have to recognize, as we did with pathways, the changing marketplace around us. And there's a lot of amazing and really smart people working in this profession. So if you take the CPE issue as an example, our chief concern was that they went all the way to an elimination. They weren't talking about modernization. How can we work together? It's just we want to get rid of it altogether. There's no point in it. Um, and when you add that with now you're starting to talk about risks to commerce. If you look at what happened with pathways, it was important that all of the states, or at least the majority of the states work together towards a common goal. Both the societies and the state boards as the regulators towards this common goal, so that we didn't disrupt our system of commerce because again, that that creates headache and red tape and barriers for everyone. So, you know, I would say I know this is a topic that you're super passionate about. I think there's a lot with CPE that we can think about. I think there's a lot that we can do to modernize it, to make sure that the purpose of it is to make a more competent CPE A. Right. But if we do that, and I'm excited to do it, I'm, I'm, I'm all in. We got to do it together so that we don't disrupt commerce. And that was always my issue with the CPE portion of the bill this year is, is just, hey, you got to give me an opportunity to do what's best for our license and what's best based on the marketplace, and not just throw this missile at me and say, to hell with your commerce, right? So if we can do that and we can kind of do a call to action together, I think that's a great way that we can think about another level of deregulation, but on our terms.

Blake Oliver: [00:26:16] So you face this bill now for two years. Do you expect it to come back or have you put it to rest?

Shelly Weir: [00:26:25] Yes. Um I don't think we've put it to rest. This is an election year in Florida, so we will get a new governor in November. Um, we will also have a new speaker of the House and a new Senate president. So we get an all new deck of cards to play with. Blake. Um, if I had a crystal ball as we sit on what's today June 4th. And I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow. Okay. So if someone's listening to this in a few months, I want that noted for the record. But if I had a crystal ball today, I do not think the issue of deregulation is going away. Absolutely not. I think we'll probably see, you know, like a licensing reform task force or some type of reduction requirement and rules and regulations. We'll probably see the CPE issue resurface here and in other states. Um, but I do think that when you have a new deck of cards and you've got new folks coming into office, it presents an amazing opportunity again for us to see where we can find common ground. And if we can do that before they drop a bill, we can be far more successful. So I'm not sure as we sit today that we will see the board elimination proposal next year, but I would never count it all the way out because that that idea has been planted and it's landed. And there's a lot of people that have been here, regardless of the election the last couple of years, that are still interested in that. So we'll see. But I promise I'll keep everybody posted.

Blake Oliver: [00:27:55] I've been speaking with Shelly Weir, president and CEO of the Florida Institute of CPAs. Thank you, Shelly, for talking to me today about this. Really appreciate having you on the program.

Shelly Weir: [00:28:07] No. My pleasure. And just thank you, Blake, for all that you do. And listen, state societies are on the front lines of this. It's been, um, as I said, pressure is a privilege. It's been my privilege to be the general, if you will, of this particular fight. But, um, it's not over. And let's all just work together to, to find common ground and work together to advance the profession. That's the most important thing, right?

Blake Oliver: [00:28:32] And if you're listening and you want to follow fi CPAs advocacy work, you can head over to FIC dot ORG. Thanks for listening. See you around here next time.