ALC-Occupational Licensing Review Subcommittee

Dotson of leading us in prayer and then Senator Leding I will fall that of leading us in the pledge. Okay we are at the. Consideration of a motion to adopt the occupational into the questionnaire that's exhibit be. Of brought under your agenda. Of this questionnaire we of so was met with the. Folksy you see a cannot remember the name of the particular think tank there of that works on these issues and they had some recommended questions. Of. That we worked on to be asked in these meetings we thought they would be good the problem being if we ask him in the meetings and folks come unprepared they won't have the answers to all these questions on so we wanted to. The send these out to folks in the future and so but we need the committee to to vote to adopt a. I've got. Okay I've got a representative Ladyman. Thank you Mr I'd like to move that we adopt the occupational entity questioner. Second a second from washer Cozart the discussion. Hearing none all for the motion signify by saying aye aye aye All opposed. Hearing no objections motion is carried without objection of. Moving to see. Of the consideration of a motion to suspend the rules and take up supplemental report the reason that we have C. is that the of so called the reports we're not here. In time. For us to do it without suspending the rules. That missed the cut off the that is the D. section if we don't vote to suspend the rules we will be adjourn. Hi after E. will go straight to E. because we will be doing the will move data may so would someone like to us represent Cozart makes motion suspend the rules have second. Save the couple seconds of your representative Payton of any discussion. Hearing none all for the motion signify by saying I'm. All opposed motion carried without objection. Moving to D. review a supplemental reports from occupational authorization entities number one Arkansas contractors licensing board which will be your exhibit the one if you. German and or ladies would like to come forward. So we have Mister Gregory crow. And. If you will be sure your marks are all in. Offense all as if us starting to my left you're right if you will identify yourself your name of and well your positions. Of my name is Mike Holcomb I am current chairman of contractors licensing board for the state of Arkansas okay thank you Mr chairman on thanks Greg Greg Gregory grow on the minister's my title most agencies in the Director of the contractors licensing board. Right of and the do you have. Presentation yes thank you. I'll start with our mission statement is complete is to protect the public health safety and welfare of the citizens of Arkansas officials personally and reasonably licensing contractors and enforcing the licensing models. A bit of history the commercial licensing law was created in 1939 residential builders were added in 1999 and home improvement contractors were added in 2011. We currently license or register approximately 17000 contractors of those approximately 8500 hold commercial licenses or registrations approximately 2300 holder residential builders license an approximate 6400 hold home improvement license or registration. Our fees are among the lowest in the nation commercial and home builder of new applications or $0 with renewals of $52 home improvement licenses are $50 for a new application and $25 renewal the refrigeration law which was passed last session which went into effect for residential roofing taking no no longer license they are registered with the bond that that fee is $20 we have 2 boards the contractors licensing board on the commercial side in the residential committee on the residential side both have 7 members appointed by the governor we have 14 employees which include for for field investigators. Revenues for fiscal year 21 was 1000000 570 6000 $85 expenditures were 0 47732 as of June thirty twenty one we had reserves amount of 1000000 898123. That amount has been generally steady for the last 10 years we did dip into reserves in 2019 in 2014 and 2013 and may have to this year we received 310 formal consumer complaints in fiscal year 21. The of there we go. Represented by. Thank you Mr so my question is on overlap I noticed the second third page here the residential building contractor in a residential home improvement specialty contractor very similar. Of it seems that there may be some overlap there but how many people are required to hold multiple licenses ordered for that situation there will be none because if you have a home that was lost and you don't know how you can do all the home improvement work you want without without any additional losses on the home builder covers everything you can build a house you can referred house you can add on to the house you can do everything the next step down representative is remodeling classification again not less than 2 and yet everything of the House like an out on to the house they can report back inside if they can do concrete they can do whatever they want to House I just can't build a new one. That's the builder and then after that you have individual specially classes so no none of those people would be doing duly licensed you would not have somebody here as a home improvement of license for for siding and then also as a builder know the builder classification would covered the siding or the. Those type of things okay so we see the numbers a licensee's then there's not any overlap there the only overlap you would ever see is occasionally and I think there's less than 100 of them last I checked there are people who have both a commercial license and a home in a residential license just because again general if you've got a commercial license you can do residential you don't have to have that classification I do not have that but there are few classifications on the residential side what a few people for example maybe they don't qualify for I don't want to qualify for a commercial builder but they they do want to have a residential building if they want to do some small things on the commercial side so they have a aside and classification on the commercial but there's less well less than 100 and that was a perfect segue into my follow up if I could have a follow up yes so the qualifications we see here the cost but can you give us a little I'm not specific will covered the qualifications for the 3 different levels sure I'll start with commercial the commercial license requires always X. always attends on what type of license you're applying for within you might be applying for a commercial. Are you might be applying for a commercial builder you might be applying for commercial Holly builder thank you showed the proper experience to get that classification we don't required and how the hell to test we do have those available if someone we look at your experience are we've discovered over the years that unlike most states do require how to test we believe that you showing us you've got that much better proof that you know what you're doing and taken so how does an Arkansas resident show experience if you can't operate prior to having the license most of them come up through the industry the work for somebody else you don't have to have been the owner of the company does not you don't you can be in charge of a project as a project manager or the author does lots of things that's gently hot happened you could come up through the industry we do have a test we do a test available if you want if you say I don't have the experience but I think I know what I'm doing I can we we do have those test available also you can you can do it that way very few people do that everybody almost everybody who applies for a license shows us experience and that's really not been a problem. Mary so is there trade school there are there are a lot of that for certain classifications are there's a there's a carpentry trade schools obviously electrical and plumbing and HVAC of the trying to think if there's other trade schools out there for other things I know there are thank you for your time have a carpenter is a big one that there's several trade schools out there run by the industry usually and if if I may in interject there there are several construction based organizations like a a G. C. a B. say of that are very involved in the education and training for the trades of for but as he mentioned carpentry electrical plumbing mechanical HVAC in in they have classes all over the state and what's good about our industry is as a rule the contractors of a pay for that out of their pocket pocket so when it comes to the experience requirements on the do you have a. A standard that your board goes buyers is a you know how do you. How do you really dig into that so we have reference forms they fill out that show was where they were where they got jobs and we and we we checked not we don't check under some of them we spot check them and we rarely ever find someone lying to us about it but the for the major classifications that's building class building a skyscraper for example for a however what airport this would utility someone of the major classifications they need to show 5 years experience it doesn't actually mean the person again I want to I'll be back up once apologized representative please remember that we're licensing businesses we're not license an individual workers so the individual worker you go to a construction site the odds of the individual worker on the job site having a license in the contractors licensing board is very slim it's the business that is yes and now both construction has got last time I checked over 900 employees I have 1 license the individual employees to not have licenses so when you're applying for a license as a business maybe the experience comes from you you've been that you've been in the industry you you've come up working for Mr okay working for somebody else or whatever or maybe you've hired somebody that's been working for somebody else it's got 45 years experience but the major classifications we're looking for 5 years of experience they can come to yours over here 3 years I would hear from different people of for the all the other classifications wrong looking for 1 year of experience again we just don't have a problem with people of Collins I and I want to get a license but I don't qualified by experience okay thank you thank you Mr. I would say by the way on the residential side home improvement side we don't have it just shows you done it if you want to if you wanted a site in Los Angeles you're done at least once that's almost a registration on the right on the on the home improvements on. Represent because of. President but just chime in a little bit of what they were talking I think you missed while saying when he says he license business there is a qualifier for the license in that business so there someone is taking the test or have the qualifications to start with the start of that business or something like that so same process that we all have to go through I'm listed as a commercial license license of mine I can be residential anything in residential hold actually both losses only pay one fee for that but I'm the qualifier sold people work under me do not have a license by son used to have a remote work license but he no longer has that he just works under mine so it's it's very easy for the workers but once a training to me I've had plenty of people that work for me to come up and get to the point that they want to go get their own license so I given that recommendation and and I can't remember how many but they have to have either people that work for our other contract for that work for that that goes for that use sorry let's count process makes it easy for people to get license. I'm going to go down through this questionnaire joke of receive of the questionnaire that we're going to use an interest I saw him this morning to start working on answers yes okay good of. For full disclosure of our. I have been a holder of a residential building contractor Lawson's sense representative Cozart. Passed this legislation. And he knows I've never been he set up welcome he knows I've never been thankful of the since he passes legislation of because I had I was grandfathered in had built a few houses and needed the losses not because I was building houses but because. We install flooring through our company. And what will continue to be a pain in my side until recently was. But the job is bigger than $50000 of which were not uncommon I did have a license for so I had to go through somebody else or so finally 2 years ago I think it's been now I finally applied took the test and I'm a commercial. I have a commercial contractors license. Of so. The world is safe. I've never built a commercial building but the world is safe of the of and the there is more of a cost in the $0 though yes because that that's one the things I don't know when we question the other folks that come in here because the the time it takes to get these things done of but I think our call state with an account it is somewhere between 700 and $1000 to. Show that we have. Whatever is required. Financially so the so there's more of a cost than the $100 that the state gets to continue to have this license yes. Would consumers be at risk of substantial harm of Arkansas do not have this occupational or authorization yes Sir absolutely while most contractors are honest in. We also never got a complaint against your company Senator Clark young obviously are honest and competent and you did have to show the property spirits and building homes is certainly yeah I will back up one small step inside you have to give me a contractor that's got knows how to run a business that's what we take a business martyrs who has proper financing and has experience knows how to build whatever is going to build. The contractor is not. As always exception to the rule the term that conduct is not going to rip off people that contractors not going to go out of business leaving his customers the subs and suppliers by that's that's what we look at those 3 things. so do other states they have other costs as well I'm not aware of any state that has anywhere close to slow things we. H. the little bit of a repaid for how many applicants for the occupational authorization fail at your.