A friend sent me an article from the Aug. 28 Rockland, New York JournalNews newspaper entitled "Contractor tries to help friend, gets slammed by regulators." It appears that a Rockland man who is a building contractor flew to Florida to help out an old friend whose house was severely damaged by Hurricane Charley a few weeks ago. Numerous Florida contractors said they couldn't repair his leaky roof for weeks, so his friend came to the rescue, at his own expense.
"Three days into the job, Howell [the contractor-friend] was approached by two deputies fro the Osceola County Sheriff's Office and two investigators from the state's Department of Business and Professional Regulation, who gave him a cease-and-desist order" on the new roof he was putting on for his friend, donating his labor and sacrificing a week's income back home.
"Under Florida law, only contractors licensed by the state may engage in roof repair;" "the practice of unlicensed contracting becomes a third-degree felony" and carries a $5000 fine.
The two men tried to explain that it was just a friend helping a friend, but the Florida bureaucrats would have none of it. They forced them to stop the job, after which the wind blew the tarp of the roof which leaked once again during a thunderstorm, threatening to collapse the ceiling and inside walls of the house. The friend went back to New York and the bureaucrats are still "investigating the circumstances," according to the newspaper account.
