Arizona to Massachusetts: master plumber license reciprocity

Massachusetts issues a statewide Master Plumber license through the Board of State Examiners of Plumbers and Gas Fitters. M.G.L. c. 142, § 3 requires a master plumber's license to engage in the business as a master plumber; the master license must be displayed in the place of business, and advertising must show the designation and license number. A licensed master plumber may carry on gas-fitting work throughout the commonwealth, subject to local permits and bonding. Under § 4 the examiners must examine each applicant for a master plumber's license; the statute has no reciprocity or exam-waiver provision.

Arizona does not issue a master plumber licence. A master plumber arriving from another state who only wants to work for an employer needs no Arizona licence (except a Phoenix journeyman card for permitted work in that city). To run a plumbing business the qualifying party must show four years of practical or management trade experience (at least two within the last ten years; up to two years creditable from accredited technical training), pass the open-book Arizona Statutes and Rules Exam (SRE, $61 through Gmetrix) and the plumbing trade exam ($66 through PSI) with at least 70% within two years of applying, complete a background check for every person named on the application, register the entity if an LLC, corporation or partnership, post a licence bond or recovery-fund assessment, and pay application and licence fees ($580 for C-37, $720 for R-37, $850 for CR-37 including the $370 Residential Recovery Fund assessment, before exam fees). The ROC pages verified for this entry describe no state-to-state reciprocity agreement; under A.A.C. R4-9-106(E) the Registrar may waive the trade exam when the qualifying party 'is currently or has previously been a qualifying party for a licensee in this state or another state in the same classification, or a comparable classification as determined by the Registrar, within the preceding five years' (Application to Waive a Trade Examination filed with the licence application, not pre-approved), and out-of-state experience counts toward the four-year requirement, but the SRE is never waived for out-of-state applicants. Individual master plumber licences from other states are not, by themselves, a waiver basis: the waiver turns on having qualified a contractor licence in a comparable classification.