HARTFORD – Another contractor quit last week on Debra Milazzo-Shannon.
The contractor.
The one who was due to finish her log cabin, which went all winter without a roof.
Milazzo-Shannon was featured in the Sun Journal in April, frustrated after spending $170,000 since September and having three-and-a-half uninhabitable walls to show for it. She blamed Maine’s inability to license home builders for her bad luck in hiring and parting ways with three consecutive contractors.
Milazzo-Shannon was among those who turned out at a State House hearing this spring to support contractor licensing in the state. Many recounted home-improvement nightmares.
Now, after an unsuccessful attempt in 2003, the effort has failed again.
Instead, Gov. John Baldacci signed into law last Thursday a directive for one state department to explore what registration – not licensing – could do for the industry and report back next winter. Any recommendations would still need to be passed by the Legislature.
“They should have just licensed them,” Milazzo-Shannon said. “I really thought they were paying attention, they were listening.”
The House and Senate passed a version of L.D. 1306 that asks the Department of Professional and Financial Regulation to “develop a model registration process for home building and improvement contractors.”
Spokesman David Bragdon said cost, pros and cons would all be explored. Registration is a lower-level of regulation than licensing, he added, but what it would actually mean has to be decided.
In licensing, there’s an exam process and proof of skills and education. Complaints can trigger an investigation, a fine or result in a license being pulled.
Five professions in Maine require registration, 34 are licensed.
Milazzo-Shannon said she thinks the expense of setting up a new regulatory board was the reason for replacing the language in the original proposal.
She believes she could have avoided some of the pitfalls in her own home project had she been aware of other peoples’ experiences with the same builders.
Last week, she said, she received a phone call from a contractor lined up in January confirming he would start work on the house off Route 140 soon. Two days later he declined the job.
“He had a bad feeling, he couldn’t do it,” she said.
She hadn’t paid anything up front. She said she had lost money doing that with another builder in December, who quit after seven days, and is pursuing him in small claims court.
Instead of finding a new builder, the fifth, “We’re just going ahead and doing it ourselves,” Milazzo-Shannon said.
She and husband, Rick, spent the holiday weekend squaring up walls and fitting logs in place. She believes a roof is a month away. They’d like to move in later this summer.
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