At a recent home inspector board meeting the Florida “coalition” licensing bill was discussed at length and questions immediately arose concerning enforcement, copied from the bill is the enforcement clause below.
It is the opinion of the group that the deceptive and unfair trade practice clause is very detrimental to our profession and should be removed. To help with your understanding of this clause listed below is the civil penalties connected to the statute.
Deceptive trade practices allow that a defendant (home inspector) can be sucessfully sued for a dollar and then be saddled with all the costs required to prosecute that case, which could be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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(16) ENFORCEMENT OF VIOLATIONS.–Any violation of this
section constitutes a deceptive and unfair trade practice,
punishable as provided in part II of this chapter.
Section 2. For the 2005-2006 fiscal year, the sum of
**$642,463 is appropriated from the Professional Regulation
Trust Fund, and four positions are authorized, to the
Department of Business and Professional Regulation for the
purpose of conducting licensing and regulatory activities
associated with home inspection services.
**(my bold)
Understanding that I’m not the sharpest pencil in the pack… Would it be possible for those who voted in favor of the use of deceptive and unfair trade practice to post and explain how this is the best remedy for home inspectors or the consumer? Thanks in advance.
I have just been informed of a new wrinkle that is worthy of note. Today in the mail I received my 2nd notice for my FABI renewal: Total Due $195.00.
At the bottom of the page reads the following paragraph.
I am no longer privy to the inner workings of FABI but a good guess would lead me to believe that this money will be used to promote licensing in one way or another. Looks like about $60,000 is being earmarked, where is NACHI’s battle fund?
Before receiving that I was weighing what value there was to being a FABI Member. After reading that the choice was very easy. My time at FABI is over as for me there was no value as a member and I will be dammed if I am going to support wasting more money on legislation. IMHO those funds would have been better used to promote the members. Good luck to you guys at FABI.
The discussion last session, at FABI, seemed to center around the need to pass ANY bill…with the hope that, once in place, it can be honed and fine tuned to meet their agenda.
Jerry Peck led the cause to grandfather everyone presently in business, knowing it would decrease opposition and would have less appearance of being exclusionary.
As FABI’s ex-president has pointed out, the power of licensing does not necessarily stem as much from granting a license as it does from the control over the licensee who desires not to LOSE his license.
Give everyone in the state a license…then, you have them under the control of the licensing board who can dictate (by interpretation or other maneuvers) what one must do to keep it.
Like Greg Bell I will no longer be associated with FABI due to their lobbying activities, in a few years they will have wished they spent the money promoting their members then on this folly.
The one thing I do admire about FABI is that they are people of conviction who are unafraid to put their money where their mouth is. If we at NACHI had half that conviction of character we would need much less money per person to move mountains.
FABI lists 372 members on their web site. At 40% of dues spent on licensing lobbying and assuming that all members renew, that will give them in the neighborhood of 29K.