Oregon Construction Contractor’s Board, Vile Creatures

Thee most vile excuses for creatures on the Planet are the Oregon Construction Contractors’ Board or CCB. I am so tired of their complete irrelevance to anything useful and complete lack of ability or understanding of anyone that wants to work with them to resolve a situation! They think they are F***ing God over any business in the State of Oregon, and sadly they are if you work in Oregon and try to start and operate a business.

CCB website states,

Mission Statement
The Construction Contractors Board protects the public’s interest relating to improvements to real property. The Board regulates construction contractors and promotes a competitive business environment through education, contractor licensing, dispute resolution, and law enforcement.

This couldn’t be any more from the truth and a realistic representation of how utterly useless they are. In the process of setting up my business here in Oregon, I have attempted on many occasions to work with the CCB to make my business “legitimate” in their eyes only, and on every occasion I have talked with them, they are completely unwilling to work with me or compromise in any manner to assist me in becoming CCB Licensed.

They have three requirements to be licensed to conduct business in Oregon;

• Taking a 16 hour course & completing an exam based on this course.

• Carrying & maintaining continuous Liability Insurance on the business to their minimum coverage amounts.

• Carrying & maintaining continuous Worker’s Compensation Insurance.

Now I have carried and maintained both the Liability Insurance & Worker’s Compensation insurance for a multitude of reasons; to cover myself & employees in the advent of accident, to cover those for whom I contract business to from any accident that may occur & to follow the regulations as need as set out.

The issue being, is the course & test they require me to take has absolutely nothing to do with my industry, Tree Pruning & Removal. These idiots at the CCB couldn’t tell the difference between a hammer and a chainsaw, let alone know anything about what is industry standards for my field of work or how my industry has little to nothing to do with constructing a f***ing house, let alone a 15 story complex.

N, what the course wants me to know how to do is run books in my business. I’m sorry, if I don’t know how to manage my income, expenses and taxes due, then I have no “business” starting a company. What further they want me to know is how to put a lien on a house for non-payment of a $1000 job and when I should file one form 7 days after the 3rd day I filed another form, which I will never need to do. Yes, I am expected to know about running a contract with a State or Federal agency, when they don’t even care if I have the slightest clue as to industry standards of the business in which I work.

The CCB, “protects the public’s interest relating to improvements to real property” by not knowing a damn thing about what the public is supposed to be protected from, let alone how a company should meet certain industry standards? No it has nothing to do with ensuring quality of work, as the CCB has no idea what any specific industry actually does, so how can they protect the public’s interest’s, which quality of craftsman ship includes, by being completely oblivious to industry standards?

I have never had a claim made against me. I have had small accidents occur, but instead of screwing the customer, I have made any damage I caused right, right then and right there. My industry of arboriculture has it’s own industry standards in ANSI code and as laid out by the International Society of Arboriculture, yet the CCB could give a rat’s ass about these in their quest to “protect the public’s interest.” The only thing they care about is ensuring you know how to schedule the construction of a residence from groundbreaking to handing over the keys to the homeowner, and when to file 10 different forms at 10 different frequencies from one another.

My industry, Arboriculture, is grouped within this organization’s domain because of the fact we work over 10ft above the ground. I’m all about safety to ensure I come home every day, and that I don’t put a tree through someone’s house, but let’s be real, the agency that regulates my industry to “protect the public’s interest” has zero knowledge in what will “protect the public’s interest” from shoddy work in this field. With this License, I could take my knowledge in trees and go build a 10 story complex according to the CCB, as could a concrete company “protect the public’s interest” by working in a tree overhanging someone’s house when they haven’t a clue how to do it safely or what are the industry standards.

It isn’t even about the money to purchase the CCB license. In comparison, the CCB license costs less than a tenth of what the insurance they require costs for a year. The price of a CCB license could be made by someone flipping burgers in 2 or 3 days, so I do not dispute it being yet another government agency that wants more money. The issue, it has zero relevance to ensuring the quality of a company or that a company has the remotest clue about what it is doing when it contracts for work.

Yet, the Oregon CCB can stop a company from working for not having its License, regardless if it pays taxes to both State & Federal entities on time, carries the necessary insurance the CCB requires or has never had a claim filed against it for negligence or damage to property. If a company does not have any experience in the field it is conducting business, things are A-OK with the CCB just as long as it has the CCB License and knows the exact number of days when to file a claim against a customer who has not paid because the company doesn’t know its ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to the industry and produced a trash product.

How does it tie to me? I am a startup business, working on my own, trying to make a living while providing an excellent service to my customers. I do not knock on doors and try to sell people what they do not need, often times talking them out of work that other businesses have “sold” them on that does not need to be done. Often, as it is in a new business, I underestimate what it will take to get a job done the correct way, yet I don’t rush through and do a crappy job just to make a quota for the day and take the loss in time and money as a learning experience.

Yet, because I’ve had some down months, well closer to a year, completely overwhelmed by starting and running a business on my own, that is both physically & mentally exhausting, (being a “monkey” in a tree with a chainsaw and people below you, is not as easy as the real monkeys on the Discovery Channel make it out to be) and have neither worked for months or answered my phone, some dumb person more “God” like than the CCB felt it his/her necessity to contact the CCB about me. Now I never talked with this person, they may have left a voicemail for me, but I never responded, schedule an appointment to meet them, then wasted their time by not showing. No, I simply did not respond, so “chief douche bag” felt it his moral obligation to go out of his way to report me to the CCB and because I didn’t check my mail for 2 months, they are fining me for not responding or having a License even though I had insurance coverage as required and was not even working!

As always attempts to contact and work a compromise with these useless people at the Oregon Construction Contractor’s Board, results in the same, “Here’s my situation, can we work out a compromise to the agreement of both?” The response every time, “Nothing we can do.” or in other words, “Go Fuck Yourself!” Thanks, once again your irrelevance is again proven.