Rep. Regina Cobb is bowing out of the race for state treasurer to take a job as executive director of the Arizona Dental Association.

A Senate committee passed a hotly contested, bipartisan bill on February 7 that proposes to license dental therapists in Arizona.

In a recent commentary in the Arizona Capitol Times, representatives of the Arizona Dental Association and the Arizona Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons questioned a proposal to expand the availability of dental providers by licensing highly trained dental therapists. The commentary’s writers called the use of dental therapists an “experiment” — an odd way to describe a profession that has existed in more than 50 countries for nearly 100 years.

Legislators are again being asked to license dental therapists in Arizona, but after the effort’s resounding failure last year, skeptics continue to argue that backers are responding to a problem that doesn’t exist. Dental therapists are mid-level professionals similar to ...