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SALT LAKE CITY — There are a lot of jobs Christopher Stearman can do, but he'll only do them if he's licensed to do them.
"If you do work for someone you don't know exactly how to do, or you're not sure what's happening, you can ruin someone's house," Stearman said.
It is a violation of the law to advertise if you're an unlicensed contractor that you can do construction work.
–David Furlong, DOPL
He owns Express Handyman Services in Salt Lake County and is licensed with the Utah Department of Commerce. He's heard plenty of stories of unlicensed contractors messing up jobs.
"I get calls from people all the time, who are trying to repair what a contractor started," Stearman said.
The state did an investigation last week, asking online for repair work on two houses — one in Fruit Heights, and the other in St. George. They got a lot of responses, mainly from unlicensed contractors for whom they wrote citations: nine in Fruit Heights, 12 in St. George.
- The Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing (DOPL) is one of seven agencies within the Utah Department of Commerce.
- DOPL is legislatively charged to administer and enforce specific laws related to the licensing and regulation of certain occupations and professions.
- Currently, DOPL issues licenses in approximately 60 categories of licensure.
- As of March 2010, over 170,000 individuals and businesses held licenses issued by DOPL.
- Annually, DOPL reviews an average of over 24,000 new applications and processes approximately 58,000 renewal applications.
"It's certainly something we're going to continue to do around the state," said David Furlong, chief investigator for Utah's Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing.
"It is a violation of the law to advertise if you're an unlicensed contractor that you can do construction work," he added.
Furlong said stings like this not only protect licensed workers, they also better protect homeowners if something goes wrong.
"There are no guarantees. They don't have insurance. They may not have the skill level to get it done," he said.
For contractors like Stearman, they're just happy the state is looking into this issue. "I want people to be able to trust me," Stearman said.
Furlong said if you ever have any questions about whether or not someone is licensed, you can call the Utah Department of Commerce at 801-530-6628 If you have the contractor's license number, you can check its validity on the department's website, secure.utah.gov/llv/search/index.html.
