As the Industry has heard, DOB recently initiated a program to issue ECB violations to licensed plumbers for “negligence, incompetence, lack of competence and/or disregard of the code,” citing failure to pass inspections that they themselves requested. A finding of guilt on an ECB violation could be used in a later proceeding to suspend the person’s license. (It would then be almost impossible to defend the suspension proceeding since the underlying violation had already been adjudicated between DOB and the licensee.)
Recently, ECB determined that the issuance of such a violation was invalid for two reasons. First, ECB was not the appropriate forum under the Code to take action against a licensee and second, DOB never promulgated a standard of what percentage of requested inspections that did not pass rose to the level of negligence, incompetence, lack of competence or disregard of the Code.