A Vancouver man faces criminal charges that he operated as an unregistered contractor while paving driveways for Clark County residents, the state Department of Labor & Industries said Monday.
Salvador Rodriguez, 44, faces two felonies for doing business without workers’ compensation insurance and failing to report or pay workers’ comp premiums. He also has been charged with six counts of unregistered contracting, a gross misdemeanor. Rodriguez is scheduled to be arraigned in Clark County Superior Court today.
The state said Rodriguez operated Chava Paving, which had an address at 1315 N.W. 88th St. in Vancouver. An online directory lists Chava & J Paving at that address. Its phone number was disconnected on Monday.
Labor & Industries said the state attorney general’s prosecution stems from a labor and industries investigation and “multiple encounters” between Rodriguez and its construction compliance inspectors. The criminal charges cover at least seven jobs Rodriguez’s company performed or agreed to perform from September 2012 through June 2014. On several of the jobs, labor and industries said it received consumer complaints that Chava Paving did shoddy work or never finished a project. Customers said Rodriguez refused to provide refunds or complete the jobs, according to the department.
In one instance last June, a Ridgefield property owner paid $33,000 in advance for the company to build a retaining wall and parking pad, and to spread gravel on a road, according to labor and industries. The owner said that after five days on the job, the crew’s work was so poor and incomplete that he canceled the contract. Rodriguez wouldn’t repay any of the money, which the property owner had paid in checks written to Salvador’s 17-year-old son, court documents said.
Labor and industries also found that Rodriguez, who employed from three to 10 workers, wasn’t paying workers’ compensation for his employees. In one case, at a Vancouver mobile home park in July 2013, the state said, one worker filed a wage complaint, contending that he was never paid. The department said it retrieved the back pay for the employee.
During an October 2013 interview with labor and industries staff, court documents said, Rodriguez admitted he and his workers were performing paving jobs without a contractor’s license or workers’ compensation account. He said he had to keep working to pay his bills.
Rodriguez originally registered Chava Paving in 2005. Labor and industries suspended his contractor registration in May 2009 when his insurance and bond were canceled, and revoked his workers’ comp coverage in October 2010 for failing to pay premiums. Since 2009, the department said, state inspectors have issued Rodriguez a dozen civil citations for unregistered contracting. The contractor has not paid any of them, the state said.
Even with this long history of problems with Rodriguez, “it took getting enough evidence, including witness statements, to reach the threshold for a criminal prosecution,’ said Debby Abe, a department spokeswoman. “Now is when it all came together for a criminal charge.”
Consumers can check whether a contractor is registered by going to www.Verify.Lni.wa.gov or calling 1-888-811-5974.
