On June 17, Gov. John Kasich signed Senate Bill 78 into law, which improved existing laws related to specialty/mechanical contractor licenses and expanded the authority for the state licensing board.
To assist legislators and others tracking legislation through the Statehouse, the Ohio Legislative Service Commission prepares an analysis of proposed bills. Here is the “Bill Summary” section of the analysis for the bill that has now become law in Ohio.
BILL SUMMARY
- Requires, rather than permits, an individual applying for a specialty contractor license to request that the license be assigned to a contracting company with whom the individual is employed.
- Modifies the procedure by which an assigned license becomes invalid subsequent to a contractor’s disassociation from a contracting company.
- Expands the reasons for which discipline may be imposed against a licensee and modifies the disciplinary actions that may be imposed.
- Requires each specialty section of the Board to direct the Administrative Section of the Board to refuse to issue a license to an applicant who had another person take the licensing examination for the applicant or who failed the licensing examination.
- Allows a specialty section of the Board to take action against a licensee without a hearing if the licensee does not request a hearing within 30 days of receiving notice of the Board’s intent to act against the licensee.
- Allows a specialty section of the Board, upon determining that a person has acted as a specialty contractor without the appropriate license, to file a complaint with the appropriate prosecutor for criminal prosecution.
- Removes, from the requirements for a written notice sent by a specialty section to a person who is alleged to have acted as a specialty contractor without a license, the requirement that the notice be sent within seven days of the section’s determination.
- Allows a specialty section to take action against a person who is alleged to have acted as a specialty contractor without a license upon an affirmative vote of a quorum of the section’s members if the person does not request a hearing within 30 days of receiving notice of the section’s intent to act against the person.
- Reduces from four to three the number of affirmative votes of specialty section members required to impose a penalty on a person who the section determines after a hearing has acted as a specialty contractor without a license.
- Eliminates the current law liability of each licensee of a business to which multiple licenses have been assigned regarding violations of the terms of the license committed during any work conducted under any of the licenses.
- Removes the current law requirement that liability insurance required by each specialty section of the Board for a person applying to be licensed by the Board must include complete operations coverage, and requires liability insurance to be maintained in only one contracting company name.
- Allows an applicant who fails a specialty contractor licensing examination to retake the examination 60 days after the initial examination, and limits the retakes to five.
- Transfers responsibility for designing examinations for specialty contractor licenses from the Administrative Section of the Board to the specialty sections.
- Requires each specialty section of the Board to adopt rules establishing criteria for the specialty section to use in deciding whether to issue, renew, suspend, revoke, or refuse to issue or renew licenses.
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