(TRENTON) – Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo recently sponsored legislation designed to protect consumers by ensuring HVACR companies carrying out work in New Jersey are readily available and accessible to their customers. The bill, which clarifies ownership standards of certain HVACR contactors, was signed into law Thursday by Governor Phil Murphy.
“HVACR is an incredibly lucrative and necessary field, and this law is designed to encourage people with a certain set of hands-on and entrepreneurial skills to get involved,” said DeAngelo (D-Mercer/Middlesex). “We need talented individuals filling the skills gap we currently have, and I believe these bills will help remedy this.”
The law (A-3703) revises the definition of “bona fide representative” in “The State Heating, Ventilating, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Contracting License Law” to mean a Master HVACR contractor who has not less than one percent ownership of the capital of a partnership, or not less than one percent ownership of any other firm or legal entity engaged in HVACR contracting in New Jersey with the exemption of publicly traded corporations principally engaged in HVACR contracting.
Under previous law, in order to act as a Master HVACR contractor, an individual must have been a bona fide representative of the legal licensed entity.
This new law would mean that if the Master HVACR contractor is a corporation, the bona fide representative owns stock equaling one percent interest, and, if there is more than one class of stock, the stock owned by the bona fide representative is the highest level stock with full voting rights.
The bill was approved by the General Assembly by a vote of 73-5 on September 27.