Columnist Jeff German: Getting to bottom of inspector ‘shortage’

Friday, Sept. 23, 2005 | 6:48 a.m.

Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

WEEKEND EDITION

Sept. 24-25, 2005

After two months of political sparring and warnings of an inspection crisis on the home building front, it turns out that there's no need right now for the county to hire independent inspectors.

There isn't even a crisis.

"We can address the needs of the developers at this time without the program," says County Commissioner Tom Collins, the very man who persuaded the commission last month to approve the hiring of the "third party" inspectors.

Collins hasn't given up on the program, but he says there's no urgency to implement it.

His change of heart is the result of a realization that the home builders overplayed their hand last month when pushing for the outside inspectors.

The home builders, Collins says, now are acknowledging on their association's own Web site that new housing permits are down 18.1 percent from last year.

That shoots a giant hole in their argument that they were having trouble finding county inspectors to approve new construction projects.

Collins also now believes that lax recruiting on the part of the Building Division, headed by Ron Lynn, has led to the current shortage of county inspectors.

"The bottom line is that the Building Division needs to be more aggressive in doing its job," Collins says.

Does that sound familiar?

It's what the building inspectors and their Service Employees International Union reps, who oppose the private contractor plan, have been saying for the past two months.

They contend the shortage was deliberately created by Lynn to curry favor with the home builders, who see the hiring of private inspectors as a way to gain more control over the inspection process and avoid public accountability.

"There really isn't a shortage of building inspectors," SEIU Executive Director Jane McAlevey says. "There's a lack of will to hire the building inspectors."

McAlevey and the inspectors say they have the smoking gun that proves their case.

They've shared it with Collins and plan to show it to other commissioners in hopes of persuading them to put the private contractor program on ice for good.

Last month, at the request of an SEIU researcher, County Chief Administrative Officer Don Burnette provided alarming statistics to the union that showed Lynn has let many qualified entry-level inspectors slip through his fingers in the past two years.

At a public meeting in July, Lynn told the commissioners that he has been faced with a "shrinking pool" of available talent.

But his words were later contradicted in Burnette's report to the union.

Of the 245 "qualified" applicants seeking jobs since August 2003, Burnette indicated, only 73 were interviewed and 16 hired.

That makes no sense to Zack Gharibian, a senior building inspector and SEIU shop steward.

"There's really no legitimate reason why they couldn't have interviewed more applicants," he says. "They had the means to hire a lot more people."

Gharibian estimates that Lynn had enough money budgeted during that two-year period to fill as many as 18 additional open positions.

Lately, however, Gharibian acknowledges, Lynn has stepped up hiring efforts.

A dozen or so entry-level positions, he says, have been filled within the past couple of weeks, giving Gharibian and his fellow inspectors comfort.

But Gharibian says the home builders also should be doing a better job of preparing new homes for inspection.

Last month, he says, inspectors gave failing marks 29 percent of the time.

The disapproval rate is 27 percent over the last three years, he adds.

"They're wasting a lot of our time," Gharibian says. "They should be putting more experienced superintendents on these job sites to get the jobs done right."

As for Tom Collins, what a rarity it is to come across an elected official who's not afraid to change his mind after hearing all of the facts.