A clampdown by Los Angeles city officials on unlicensed contractors has unfairly branded some local well-meaning handymen as criminal violators, according to defense lawyers. (photo by Alaena Hostetter)

Enacting a set of laws aimed at protecting homeowners, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo has suggested that illegal, unlicensed contractors pose a public threat similar to the scourge of armed gangs. But county public defenders involved in the more than 100 cases filed in the past year contend that well-meaning handymen have also fallen victim to what they call the City Attorney's "draconian" anti-contractor stings. They also contend that such indiscriminate enforcement is an egregious waste of taxpayer money.

"The City Attorney's office is on some kind of vendetta," said Jacqueline Brand, a deputy L.A. County Public Defender who successfully represented two clients in cases with unlicensed contractor charges stemming from stings conducted by the Contractor's State License Board and the LAPD.

"The law makes sense when you're talking about people who are scam artists, people who do crappy work who are misrepresenting themselves as something that they're not," Brand said. "But this is not what this is, this is just for numbers," she added.

Both of Brand's clients advertised their handyman services in local classified ads, such as Craigslist and Pennysaver. An individual can do up to $500 worth of work without a license. Brand and her colleagues say that their clients fall into a gray area where a little education, and not prosecution, is all that is needed.

"I would say that that is absolutely wrong," said Mark Lambert, Deputy City Attorney of the Corruption and Fraud Enforcement section. "The law is quite clear and especially if you advertise, a license is required so that the public can look it up and find out that you're in good standing," Lambert continued, insisting that following the law is every citizen's responsibility.

The Contractors State License Board works with local agencies to conduct one or two stings a week throughout the state. Each involves a house with investigators posing as homeowners and police monitoring remotely until the law is broken. Targets are chosen based on ads such as those taken out by Brand's clients or from complaints from victims of contractor fraud. Licensed contractors also report unfair competition from those that don't have the insurance costs and other overhead incurred by operating legally.

"Rocky Delgadillo has been very proactive in going after unlicensed contractors because he knows they're a major drain on the economy," said Pamela Mares, media representative for the CSLB. Homeowners who think they are getting a deal may end up spending twice as much to fix bad work and they are also vulnerable to lawsuit should an uninsured, unlicensed contractor injure themselves while doing work.

"What we're talking about is fair competition," said David Kalb, CEO of Cut Red Tape, an organization that has been helping Californians get contract licenses for 27 years. "I've seen the damage that can be done," he said, all for a test that costs $600 to take, or $900 with the books that he recommends through his company.

"That sounds like entrapment," Kalb said when asked about the arrest of unwitting, otherwise law-abiding citizens after several small jobs combine to cross the $500 threshold at the CSLB stings.

He quickly added, "but that scenario also is the exception to the rule."

Handyman Michael Beasley, who was successfully acquitted on charges of unlicensed bidding on a contract and advertising without a contractor's license with Brand's help, called his prosecution "a nightmare."

According to court documents, the 55-year-old musician with no criminal record went to a house in Van Nuys on March 13 of last year. He went to meet a woman who had responded to his ad in the "Handyman" section of Pennysaver.

Beasley does handyman work to supplement the $2000 a month he makes from touring with a band.

"I'm not trying to rob anybody, not trying to jack, just trying to provide and use my instinct for survival," Beasley said in a phone interview. "I have some of the tools to do it and I want to utilize them to the best of ability."

When he entered the customer's house, he was asked to do several small scale jobs. While no individual task exceeded the $500 threshold, his cumulative estimate did.

"If I had to come out to give you a quote, not to say that I'm going to take the job and not to say that they're going to pick me, but I would give you my honest opinion on what it's going to cost," Beasley said. "If you come out to paint my house and you give me a quote that's ridiculously low, I'm going to be a little leery of you."

"There are certain people that like to break the law just to rebel, but I would have certainly taken a second look and approached it a different way," he said.

He was given a pamphlet and an application for a contractor's license after he was handcuffed and cited for a misdemeanor.

"We don't make a point of going after little guys," said Mares.

Public defender Brand and her colleague Brian Wu, who unsuccessfully defended a client in another unlicensed contracting case, say the CSLB did not attempt to contact Pennysaver before initiating the March sting to inform the publication that it might be running ads for illegal work.

"We have contacted numerous publications that take the ads; some of them are a lot more diligent about it than others," Mares said in response to that claim, asserting that it is not his task to police private companies.

Mares provided an example of a disclaimer found on Craigslist that reads: "State Law requires a person to be a licensed contractor to perform work of improvement totaling $500 or more. A contractor must list his State Contractor's license number in advertising for work. All others who advertise should include a statement that they are not licensed."

However, when Brand contacted Pennysaver in preparing to defend Beasley, the publication claimed to know nothing about the statutes on contracting without a license and indicated that as long as unlicensed contractors placed their ads in the handyman section, they would be safe.

Representatives from Pennysaver could not be reached for direct comment.

When pressed about the need for education to avoid cases like Beasley's, Mares said, "we don't have much of an advertising budget so we try to do our grassroots education system, which mainly is reaching out to individuals who are caught up in stings." The CSLB depends on word of mouth from those individuals as well as any publicity the stings receive in the media to get the word out.

Deputy City Attorney Lambert backed the word-of-mouth campaign as the best method of educating the public.

Public Defender Wu disagrees. "Is that the best use of resources?" Wu asked, predicting it must cost the state more to carry out reactive sting operations than it would to get organizations like Pennysaver to feature a disclaimer for those taking out ads in the handyman section.

Wu also notes that across the board, plea bargain deals offered by the City Attorney's office include a $500 charge to the defendant for "investigative costs."

The City Attorney also doesn't offer any form of diversion for early negotiations. With diversion, charges expire after community service and a certain amount of time. It is almost exclusively reserved for defendants without prior criminal offenses so they walk away with a clean record, should the attorneys agree to such a condition based on the details of the case.

"Diversion doesn't accomplish the goal that you want to see when you file against unlicensed contractors because they're not on probation, which leaves the court no power over them," said Lambert, adding that it also "prevents additional penalties for a second offense" because there is no first.

Wu points out that diversion also does not garner the City Attorney's office a conviction statistic, which he said is a valuable political and public relations metric to their office.

The total cases seen by Wu, Brand, and their colleagues in the public defender's office represent roughly 10 percent of the total volume filed in the past year. Put the cases together and it suggests that the City Attorney's office and the CSLB are needlessly putting honest craftsmen through the wringer.

But unlicensed contracting is a legitimate problem in Los Angeles and prosecutors have little time and resources to tend to a 10 percent gray area when enforcing a law that protects against a very real threat to homeowners, according to both Lambert and Mares.

"Just because they slap the cuffs on you and beat you down, it don't mean you're guilty," Beasley said while reflecting on the affair. "I just kinda went through it to get through it," he responded when asked why he decided to go to trial. "And our case was convincing to the jury," he said.