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Death of a Contract Bill

   I was having a chat with a purveyor of kitchen cabinets the other day. He had just finished a phone conversation with a new client. This client had previously hired a contractor to remodel his kitchen for a price of $15,000. The contractor wanted half up front and the client forked it over without any questions, nothing in writing, no specifications, zippo. You know what comes next, right?
   The story goes that the contractor ripped out all of the old kitchen cabinets, then demanded half of the remaining balance. The client finally got wise and protested. “You barely got started and you want another $3,750? I think you should at least get the new cabinets here first.” “No dice” the contractor told him. “That’s my policy and if you don’t pay up, I can’t finish your job.” And off he went.
   After what must have been the Super Bowl of wife lectures, the guy finds the aforementioned kitchen salesman and asks him to finish the job. “I can get this done for you”, the salesman tells him, “for $25,000.” The guy freaks. “The other contractor was only charging me $15,000. I thought we could get it done for that.” No dice.
   The $25,000 quoted by the salesman was a fair price and coupled with the $7,500 given away to the first contractor, this gentleman learned an expensive lesson.   And what was that lesson? That some people are dishonest? Well, we already knew that. No, what we learn from this is that you need to be able to do something about dishonest people when you catch them. In this case, was the contractor breaking the law? Probably not. He told this fellah how much money he wanted but he didn’t tell him what he was getting. When asked, the contractor wouldn’t even tell the client what kind of cabinets he was providing!! Sleazy, yes, but illegal?
   What was needed here is exactly what the Home Builders and Remodelers Association of NH proposed in Senate Bill 100, which required a contract for home improvement projects. Requiring an agreement in writing isn’t about criminalizing the lack of a pen and paper. It’s about giving the contractor a teensy bit of responsibility to inform the client what they are buying, from who, at what price and when they can expect delivery. Or so one would think.
   Foes of SB 100 worried about Nanny State legislation wagged their fingers at requirements like phone numbers and street addresses in the contract document. Opponents of the bill warned that a consumer with an unlisted phone number would have their privacy violated or face up to a year in jail. Voila, this common sense legislation aimed at injecting a little responsibility on contractors is magically transformed into an anti-consumer bill. Incredible.
   When an industry voluntarily provides a selfless solution to dealing with bad actors and a nagging problem, the NH Legislature would be well advised to take them up on it. This simple bill was a slow, underhand pitch and yet lawmakers whiffed impressively. There is no joy in Mudville, Mighty Casey has struck out.

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