The Maine House of Representatives on Monday passed a proposal to create licensing requirements for residential contractors in the wake of headlines regarding Mainers paying contractors tens of thousands of dollars for shoddy and incomplete work.
The House voted 72-69 to pass the measure from Rep. Tiffany Roberts, D-South Berwick, that would require general contractors performing residential construction to be licensed if they are working on projects costing more than $15,000. Violators could face fines of up to $10,000 under the bill that would also create a Residential Construction Board to oversee the licensing requirements.
Monday’s vote saw three Democrats — Jim Dill of Old Town, Allison Hepler of Woolwich and Dani O’Halloran of Brewer — join Republicans in opposing the plan. Three Democratic and seven Republican members were absent, meaning the bill could still face tight votes when it comes back to the House after the Senate votes on it.
While opponents argued new licensing requirements would cause construction and housing costs to rise in a state already facing a housing crisis, Roberts said “the reverse is true.”
“We can’t afford to lose more housing stock to fraud and poor workmanship, we can’t afford to have half-built homes sitting abandoned while families wait months or years for a resolution,” Roberts said.
The administration of Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, has mixed views on the proposal. Department of Professional and Financial Regulation Commissioner Joan Cohen came out against it in April, echoing GOP arguments to instead study how to best regulate contractors in Maine to avoid creating a system that inflates construction costs with fewer available contractors. But Attorney General Aaron Frey’s office supported it.
Frey, a Democrat, reached a settlement earlier this year with a Waldo County contractor who must pay $350,000 over 15 years after the state found him unable to pay the $2.5 million a judge had ruled he owes former clients.
The Bangor Daily News detailed civil judgments against Jake Brown and his company in an October story that came out one day before the Palermo man was arrested on felony charges related to fraud. Frey’s office said Brown’s company had more than a dozen cases of defective work since 2022, with at least 20 instances of him not finishing projects.
Roberts proposed a similar measure last year that won approval in both chambers, but it was among a ream of bills that died at the end of the session without receiving final funding decisions. This year’s would transfer $664,222 of available surplus money in the General Fund to the state’s professional and occupational regulation office to support the operation of the Residential Construction Board.
Maine is one of six states that do not require licensure for general home contractors. Frey’s office said that in the past five years it has received more than 3,200 complaints related to contractor issues worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in alleged losses.
