Is the Texas Residential Construction Commission Worth Keeping?
A little over a month ago, a local news station in the Panhandle raised the question: Is the TRCC worth keeping? For a little background, the TRCC was created in 2003 and was largely supported by home builders and contractors. A local representative, Allan Ritter, authored the bill, carried it to passage, and has recently argued that it should survive. What has come out as of late through the work of the Sunset Review Commission is that the TRCC was never really meant to regulate the contractors and as much as it was meant to protect them from being held accountable for their mistakes. What the TRCC does is create a lengthy process for resolving disputes with contractors. That process must be followed and has been known to drag disputes out for years before any resolution is reached. For that reason, many attorneys no longer accept claims where the TRCC process is implicated.
The Sunset Review Commission is set to make a recommendation in December as to whether the agency should be abolished. If you have any particular experience with the TRCC you can provide your feedback directly to the Sunset Review Commission here.
To learn more about the TRCC, their FAQ is worth reading. Pay particular interest to the State Inspection Process that you must follow in order to bring a complaint, the Arbitration Process that takes you out of the court system, and the presumption that the appointed inspector’s opinions are accurate unless proven otherwise. The process is far different than a trial by a jury of your peers and to follow the process to completion so that you can have your day in court can take years.