"For me, it's sucked all the joy out of the home inspecting I love," one of the excellent home inspectors we know told us the other day.
    We know how he feels.
    PLI has been helping home inspectors with their problems for years.  He's not the first home inspector who felt that way.  We hear lots of problems from home inspectors, partly because the Kentucky Board of Home Inspectors (KBHI) has a knack for creating problems for inspectors.  It's not a place famous for helping home inspectors solve problems.
     Problems with complaints to the KBHI are some of the most scary, bad news problems for inspectors.  You can't look up the rules.  Even lawyers don't know the rules.  The Board has no idea what its prior cases decided.  It makes up "rules" as it goes.  At least until this new Board came in.  No other state board handles discipline this way.
    It doesn't help to tell anxious inspectors there have been complaints against every home inspector on the Board today - and the KBHI dismissed every one.  After all, there's something wrong with that picture.
    To make matters worse, if the Board can't be counted on to do the right thing, or can't follow the rules itself, then who knows what will happen to one individual home inspector at any one time?  Luck of the draw and Russian roulette are scary. 

    Home inspectors facing Board complaints have plenty of reason to worry it will be unpredictable, or break more rules, in their case.  Chances are they'll wiggle to do it in secret, Open Meeting state policy or no.  And then what?
    Hire a lawyer?  To hang on to an expensive home inspector license when the KBHI has not yet taken a single unlicensed home inspector off the streets - in five years?  More and more, we're hearing licensed home inspectors talking out loud about what a joke they think the license - and the Board - turned out to be.
    Even past KBHI Chairman Mike Green teetered on that message at the last meeting, October 12.  He was bummed out over a different problem - $125,000 or so being swiped from the KBHI budget, for the second time - but his mind went to the same place.
    "For the record," Green said, "if we don't do something about this, I, for one, as the sole remaining member of the original board, will be writing a letter to the Governor and the legislature recommending that this Board be wiped out - because this just amounts to an additional tax on the home inspector," Green said.
    He was right, or half right.  The quarter-million taken from the KBHI kitty over the last two years - practically every penny straight out of the pockets of the public through home inspectors - does amount to a stealth tax on inspectors.  It's going to balance the budget, contrary to our licensing law's evident purpose.  But the other half of the story is that the money never would have been there to take in the first place if the KBHI had spent, as it was supposed to.  (For more, check out the "Your Money Is Gone" article.)
    The Board was supposed to take unlicensed inspectors of the streets.  Enforcement actions cost money.  The Board was supposed to be protecting the public with steps like publications and ads explaining why home inspections are necessary, and different from appraisals or bank/HUD/FHA "inspections."  The Board could have invested in a Client Protection Fund, to pay off small gripes and claims of disgruntled clients.  Realtors have one.  Lawyers have one.  Funds like that are win-win for the public and the professional.  But No.  The Board only spent money on itself all these years.

    The Board might be able to spend some of that cash on a Client Protection Fund before it gets ripped off this year, but somehow we doubt it will get around to it.  That's why the quarter million was sitting around collecting dust when it got swiped.
    Still, Green was far from the only inspector we've heard bring up the thought.  It comes up in PLI classes often.  Why spend all that money - the $500 renewal, the CE, the insurance - and time getting a license if nothing bad ever happens to people without a license, and the only people who get in trouble are the good guys, who followed the rules and get their licenses
    Green's point about that disappearing quarter-million dollars gets the same response.  Not just "why was it grabbed?"  But why was all that home inspector cash just sitting there, waiting to be grabbed?
    Why wasn't it working for the home buying public and home inspection professionals?  Wasn't that the whole point?  Just think of all the Board could have done with that kind of cash.

     One important thing the KBHI never spent a dime on is research.  The KBHI has no clue what's going on in other licensing states.   There are about 35 states out there with home inspector licensing.  Lots have been licensing a decade longer than Kentucky.  They had their rules tested in courts.  But there is not one memo the Board has had staff research about how those boards handle complaints, or bag unlicensed "inspectors."  They literally do not have a clue.
    Another important item the Board never spent a cent on is protecting the money it takes from home inspectors in license fees - or, call that "taxes."  Our licensing law says "no part" of the KBHI's "fees and other money" "shall revert to the general fund."  KRS 198B.710(3).  But despite $100,000 poached in 2008 and now about $125,000 up for grabs in 2010, the Board never sued to hold on to our money or challenge the rip-off.  Many Kentucky lawyers have profound doubts the 2010 budget bill in particular is constitutional, on top of the issue with our statute.  But the KBHI never even asked for a written legal opinion from its lawyers.  Worse still, it may be its lawyers, rented hourly from the AG's office, would not even give that opinion, since the Attorney General's Office has a duty to defend the state and statutes like the budget bill.
    The KBHI also never invested in full-time staff to help inspectors and the public.  KREC has three full-time staff lawyers to help agents it licenses solve problems.  KBHI has zero.  Instead, the Board has gone through three part-time  "administrators" in 15  months!  The KBHI doesn't even have an instruction manual to help these part-timers get started. So they wing it, when they answer phone calls.  No sooner than one part-time "administrator" starts to get on top of things, that one's gone.  And the merry-go-round starts all over.
    Just one more example and we'll stop here.  Another crucial item the Board never spent money on is a simple public record of all its disciplinary actions.  A few months ago, the Board directed it attorney to write a summary of all its disciplinary decisions.  She never did.  Frankly we doubt the Board even could.  PLI has recorded and taught those cases over the years, but the Board has not.  We doubt it can even name each of the cases, much less say what happened.  We'd love to be wrong about that, but we'd bet not.
    This, bluntly, is a travesty.  The prime purpose of professional discipline is to improve  behavior - not just of one person, but of everyone.  If everyone can look up the facts and the issues, and find out the right answer, then people know what they're supposed to do.  The public expectations of home inspectors and inspector performance both are improved over time that way.  But any prospect of those good outcomes is destroyed by the Board's secret decisions and incompetent record keeping.

     When nobody knows what did, or did not, result in discipline, and why, it's not just ineffective, it is counterproductive.  The Board is stuck with the same issues and the same complaints repeatedly.  Inspectors, agents, and the general public have to guess what the right thing to do, or not do, might be.

     Because of that screwed-up process, guaranteed, not even the Board itself knows its own precedents, or any rules established by any prior disciplinary cases.    It means they re-invent the wheel with every case, from scratch. 
    From the big picture, the whole idea of licensing home inspectors was to improve protections for the home buying public.

    The basic idea was to accomplish that in three ways.  First, get the fly-by-nighters off the streets.  The Board hasn't.  Second, set basic quality standards for  home inspections overall.  That was to be done by licensing that required continuing education.  The Board's done all it could to water CE down to a fare-thee-well, approving junk online CE courses and now proposing to "exempt" themselves and other CE providers from all the rules.  The third part was to provide a low cost place to handle the public's complaints.  Since the example the Board set was dismissing every complaint the public filed against a Board member, word is getting around that's bogus.  And since the KBHI "disciplinary" system is so pitifully outside the law, pretty much secret (despite Kentucky open meeting law), and undisciplined itself, inspectors are starting not to care either.  What's good for the Board is good for the inspector.
    So, with zero research on other states' home inspector disciplinary rules, and zip zero knowledge of its own cases, and nada zero history, and goose egg zero staff who were there since 2005, or even more than a year and a half, until now the Board kept charging ahead with its spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment, perhaps Divinely inspired idea of "discipline."  If ever there were a thoroughly undisciplined, abusive system, that's got to be the poster child.
    The Board's current disciplinary system is a grand total of four, count 'em four, sentences.  Seriously.  The whole regulation.  815 KAR 6:030 §3.  But even in the space of four sentences, the Board managed to find a way not to follow our law.  KRS 198B.730(1) says that "the procedures set forth in KRS Chapter 13B shall govern the board's conduct of disciplinary hearings."  But, somehow, the Board left that out of its disciplinary system at 6:030.  In fact, the regulation even leaves out the hearing!  The only reference to 13B is for "appeals."
    "You know, I'm not really worried about the complaints and the discipline for myself," that joyless inspector went on to tell us.
    "I was brought up dirt poor.  I'm not whining.  I know other people are poorer.  But I'm not worried about being poor again.  So the KBHI can't hurt me," he said.  "But I'm worried for my wife."
    "We went to Baja the week before my complaint was supposed to come up at the Board," he went on.  You could hear his mind turning to happier thoughts.  "We had really looked forward to the trip, before the complaint.  But one night, I could not sleep.  There was always this pit in my stomach.  It wasn't fun anymore."
    "I've learned more from this than I ever wanted to know," our friend sighed.

     "What would happen if all the home inspectors just stopped giving the Board money?"  he wondered.
    When we'd talked before, he'd asked "what's the worst they can do to me?"
    "There are five enumerated punishments," I explained.  "The worst is that they can do revoke your license.  They definitely can't fine you.  They tried to get fines and lost."
    "But there's practically zero chance of revocation," I hastened to add.  "They've never done it before.  They'd have to figure out how to do it.  At a minimum, they'd have to dream up how to hold their first official licensee 'hearing.'  There's not a rule on their books, other than KRS 13B.  And they're clueless about 13B."
    We both paused.  This is how it feels to be in one of Kafka's bureaucratic nightmares, I thought.
    It was a long, blue silence.  I could hear his breath.  I knew this man and respected him.  He'd been in close quarter battle before.  But never with his wife in the field of fire.  Was that B.B. King in the background, softly playing "The Thrill Is Gone?"
    "Maybe that wouldn't be so bad," he finally said.
    "Maybe.  But it would be a shame," I replied, slowly, deliberately.  It hurt just to think about what he was thinking.  This was professional suicide.  "You're a fine home inspector.  You really are helping people who honestly need your help.  You've worked hard."
    It was quiet again.
    "Right," he said, ringing off briskly.  It was almost a whisper.  "Good-bye."
    It was quiet again.  But I could swear I could hear B. B. King, strumming Lucille.  The thrill was gone.  On second thought, maybe he had a point.
    Maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all.

PLI verifies KBHI meeting quotes on PLI's tapes of meetings.  We used to check the Board's official recording.  But the Board stopped recording its meetings about a year ago, despite advice that taped meeting records were important to all other state boards.  Today, PLI has the only complete taped record of KBHI meetings.  They've already had more than one dispute about what was said when it came to approving minutes of prior meetings - with no tape to guide them.  Just wait 'til they get in their first lawsuit and try to explain they stopped taping meetings, unlike practically all other DHBC agencies, because they did not want a record of what was said.  Rumanchik will have a field day.