Rebuilt life in the balance

When Weldon Long got out of prison in 2003, the only job he could find was working for a heating and air conditioning company. Nobody else wanted to hire a convicted felon.

After work slowed and Long lost his job, he started his own company, then befriended an ex-policeman who offered to bankroll him. Today, Long is the region’s largest mechanical contractor.

Long faces a hearing Wednesday that could threaten the life he rebuilt after nearly two decades of crime and incarceration. He has asked the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department to upgrade the license he needs to do heating and air conditioning work.

That application is at the center of the building department’s struggle to balance protecting the public from unsafe contractors against a rehabilitated felon’s right to make an honest living.

At issue is how convicted felons disclose their criminal history when they apply for a license and how vigorous the department is in learning about the applicant. In Long’s case, the building department could grant his upgraded license, deny it, or even revoke his existing license, effectively forcing him out of the company.

Long, 43, has been waiting more than two months for an answer on his application. He said he has paid for his crimes and created a successful firm that employs 50 people.

“I have worked hard these last two years to build a company on a solid foundation of integrity and sound business philosophies,” Long said. “These last two months have been like everything was turned upside down. It is like somebody threw a switch and turned the hourglass over.”

The building code under which the department operates bars people convicted of felonies committed in “work related to the building trades.” Until 2005, the agency didn’t ask contractors about their criminal records.

Bob Croft, the department’s operations manager, said the agency doesn’t know how many convicted felons hold contractor licenses because the agency hasn’t done background checks on all license holders.

WELDON LONG

Long grew up in Louisiana and moved here in the mid-1980s after falling in love with Colorado on vacation.

Not long after, he began a decadelong crime spree that he said was fueled by alcohol and drug abuse. In 1987, at age 23, he and an accomplice robbed two Sunbird restaurant customers in Colorado Springs and, later, went to prison.

Less than a year after he got out, Long and an accomplice robbed Gunther Toody’s, Old Chicago and County Line Barbecue restaurants here, and did time for that, too.

Later, Long and 11 others were convicted on eight counts of mail fraud and money laundering after bilking 400 victims out of about $2 million in a fake charity scam.

Long said that on June 10, 1996, during his third trip to prison, a guard awakened him in his cell to give him news that would change his life.

“They told me to call home because my father had died,” Long said. “I had read that when your father dies it is a window into your own mortality and what legacy you will leave.

“I thought about my 3-yearold being raised by a stranger and my father’s last earthly memory being of me in prison again,” a tearful Long said. “I couldn’t bear the thought of my son growing up seeing his father only through the fence of a prison yard.”

Long began reading self-improvement books, including Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” He earned a bachelor’s degree in law in 1999 and a master’s degree in business administration in 2003.

A year before his release, he performed CPR on a prison guard who had collapsed. The warden, in a letter commending Long, thanked him for performing “an act of heroism.”

“I was on the telephone at the time, and he had collapsed about 10 feet away from me. I saw that he was turning grayish-blue,” Long said. “Three weeks later, he thanked me and I knew at that instant I was on the right path and I had to stay on that path.”

HOW REGIONAL BUILDING WORKS

The Pikes Peak Regional Building Department regulates construction activity in unincorporated El Paso County and in Colorado Springs, Fountain, Green Mountain Falls, Manitou Springs, Monument and Palmer Lake. The department’s duties include issuing licenses to contractors, issuing building permits and inspecting completed construction work.

To get a license, an applicant fills out an application, takes an open-book test, submits references and provides evidence that he or she has worked in the field. The mechanical committee reviews the application and, in most cases, approves it.

Until October 2005, the application form didn’t ask about criminal background. That changed when building department officials saw a newspaper story about the co-owner of a local heating and air conditioning company who had been convicted of conspiracy to defraud the federal government.

The department revoked that company’s contractor license and changed its application, adding a line asking about the applicant’s criminal record.

Long became the first applicant to disclose a criminal record when he renewed his license.

If not for Long’s honesty, the department might never have known. It doesn’t conduct criminal background checks on its applicants, so it doesn’t know how many of its more than 4,000 license holders have a felony conviction.

Aside from the revoked license in 2005, the department has not denied or revoked any other contractor licenses as a result of felony convictions, Croft said.

Granting a license isn’t determined solely at the local level. Under Colorado law, a felony conviction can’t be the only reason someone is denied a license, certification, permit or registration. State law requires state and local agencies to consider felony convictions when determining whether the applicant “is a person of good moral character at the time of the application.”

The law’s intent, it says, is to “expand employment opportunities for persons who, notwithstanding that fact or conviction of an offense, have been rehabilitated and are ready to accept he responsibilities of a law-abiding and productive member of society.”

BACK TO LONG AND WHERE HE IS IN THE PROCESS

After Long got out of prison in 2003, he worked for two other local heating contractors before he and his wife, Janet, started J.L. Cole Inc., which operates as A Best Value Heating & Cooling. He received a license from the building department in 2004 that allowed Best Value to install and repair heating and air conditioning systems in homes.

The application at the time didn’t ask whether Long had been convicted of a felony, but Long said he disclosed his criminal record anyway.

During a golf outing in mid-2005, Long met Ron Chaulk, a former Lakewood police officer who then owned three Papa Murphy’s pizza outlets and an Internet auction firm. Chaulk said they connected because both had read the same self-improvement books.

After selling his pizza and Internet businesses, Chaulk decided to invest in Long’s business, knowing Long’s criminal past.

“An ex-cop wouldn’t go into business with an ex-con if I didn’t trust the guy,” Chaulk said. “I knew from the first day I played golf with him that I could trust him. He doesn’t hide from his past. He is a man of honor and integrity. He is living proof people can change.”

Since Chaulk became a partner, J.L. Cole has acquired J.D. Steward Mechanical Inc. and

Wright Plumbing & Heating Co. and merged the three firms to form Wright Total Indoor Comfort. Based on heating and air conditioning permits issued this year, Chaulk said the combined company is the city’s largest mechanical contractor.

After the department changed its license form in October 2005 to include a question about felony convictions, Long indicated he had such convictions.

In January, the building department asked Long’s company, formed from three separate firms, to operate under one license. As part of that application, Long also sought to upgrade the company’s license to allow it to work on small commercial heating and air conditioning jobs.

Long said he was told that because he held a license, he had only to fill out sections on the new application listing his contact information and company officers. So he didn’t include his previous employers, references and his criminal record.

What caught the regional building department’s attention in Long’s latest application isn’t clear — he’d disclosed his felony convictions. Members of the mechanical committee won’t comment on the matter because they discussed his license request in closed session.

“We have done 1,000 permits in the past three years without a single complaint,” Long said. “We hold ourselves to a higher standard because of my background.”

WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE DEPARTMENT AND LONG

Long expects to learn the fate of his license Wednesday at a meeting of the mechanical committee. The committee postponed action on Long’s license request in March because he couldn’t attend the meeting.

At the April meeting, Long said, the committee members threatened to release his criminal past to the media unless he voluntarily gave up his license.

Long said that Steve Anderson, a committee member and owner of a competing heating and air conditioning firm, told him that he had “one opportunity to save myself the embarrassment” of making his criminal past public by surrendering his license.

“I asked him on what basis are you doing this, and he couldn’t cite any legal basis for it,” said Long, who alleges that Anderson and other competitors who serve on the committee are trying to use his criminal past to put him and his company out of business.

The panel then voted for a second delay to “allow more information to be gathered,” according to the minutes of the meeting.

Anderson did not return phone calls Friday and Monday seeking comment.

Long said he told committee members that he wanted to withdraw his application for the upgrade and retain the original license, but the request remains on the panel’s agenda.

The company hasn’t been notified it faces revocation of its original license.

The committee’s decision is a recommendation; the department’s five-member Board of Review makes the final decision on all applications.

The board includes El Paso County Commissioner Jim Bensberg, Colorado Springs Vice Mayor Larry Small and Manitou Springs Councilman Marc Snyder.

Henry Yankowsky, who took over as the regional building department’s top official in December, said he will recommend this month that the agency’s three-person governing board require criminal background checks for license applicants and raise license fees to pay for those checks.

“There must be a method to make sure this information is discussed both at the committee level and the Board of Review,” Yankowsky said. “There should take into consideration many factors, including whether someone with a felony record has turned their life around.”

Bensberg and Small said they favor criminal background checks for new license applicants, and Bensberg said he also wants such checks required for license renewals. Such checks are required for state-issued electrician and plumber licenses.

Small called background checks a “good investment, particularly when you are licensing people to go into someone’s home or business. The information should be available on the Web to the public so they can decide for themselves who to hire as a contractor.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0234 or wayneh@gazette.com

SHORT VERSION

May 12, 1987: Arrested in the armed robbery of the Sunbird Restaurant.

Oct. 19, 1987: Sentenced to 10 years, later amended to eight years, for aggravated robbery, a Class 3 felony, in the Sunbird robbery.

Nov. 11, 1992: With Todd Wilcox, committed armed robbery and kidnapping at the Gunther Toody’s on North Academy Boulevard.

Jan. 18, 1993: Arrested in Eagle County after a traffic violation, charged with possession of a weapon, burglary tools and parole violation.

March 5, 1995: Discharged from Colorado Department of Corrections, the end of 1987 sentence.

May 1997: Indicted in Nevada district court on multiple counts of mail fraud and money laundering in a telemarketing scam.

August 1997: Sentenced to 51 months in prison, eligible for release in three years. Sentence is to be served concurrently with Colorado sentence for 1992 robberies.

Oct. 13, 1998: Sentenced to 12 years, later reduced to eight, for second-degree kidnapping, a Class 2 felony. Sentence is to be served concurrently with federal sentence for the telemarketing scam.

Aug. 27, 2003: Discharged from Department of Corrections, sentence for 1992 burglaries is served.

Sept. 30, 2004: Long applied to the PPRBD for a mechanical contractor license under the umbrella of J.L. Cole Inc., dba A Best Value. License is issued in November 2005.

Nov. 15, 2005: Long's PPRBD license is renewed until November 2006. New question on the license application asks: “Have you or this company ever been convicted of a felony?” Long answers “Yes” and writes that he would discuss the matter in person.

Nov. 17, 2006: Long’s PPRBD licens is renewed until November 2007. Application question: "Have you or this company ever been convicted of a felony?" "If yes, provide details." (Both left blank.)

DETAILS

Pikes Peak Regional Building Department mechanical committee meeting

WHEN: 9 a.m. Wednesday

WHERE: 2880 International Circle

Meeting is open to the public