I think you guys are missing some information.
The Maryland Home Improvement Commission (MHIC) is already involved in Maryland. You must have a MHIC license to stain decks. Clear sealers are okay, you don't need a license to use thompsons for example.
But, you don't need one to clean decks, and that's where most of the damages happen. Now they are saying if you use chemicals when power washing, you need a license. BUT, if your using soap, you don't. This is the problem, the rules to stipulate whether you need a license or not don't make any sense. Soap is a chemical!
Decks are damaged when washing, not staining. I'm trying to get the MHIC to create different guidelines that will require everyone that does residential pressure washing to be licensed.
As it stands now, the hacks don't need a license because they all use high pressure to clean and to remove deck stains, they use turbos to strip decks so they don't have to use "chemicals" that require a license. Now tell me, if you had these stipulations that decide who needs a license, what would you do? They won't drop the laws so they only thing we can do is get them to make sense.