Carl Hiaasen - Kick Ass - Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

Afterward, resting in the air-conditioned comfort of the truck, the inspector might find a $100 bill tucked under the visor, or tickets to a Dolphins game on the seat. That's when he writes up his report, approving the roof as sturdy and up to code.

As graft goes, it's fairly uncomplicated. However, it's also time-consuming, wasteful and increasingly risky.

Computers could streamline the whole corruption process from start to finish, paradoxically benefiting taxpayers as well as dishonest builders.

If a bad roof can be "fixed" with a few surreptitious strokes on a keyboard, there's no point in sending a shady inspector to a site. Think of the money the county would save in one year on gasoline, tolls and wear-and-tear on its vehicles. Think of what it would save on stepladders.

In fact, if the chore of falsifying building records can be handled more efficiently by cybersavvy clerks, it renders crooked inspections obsolete. Why even bother?

For an unscrupulous builder, computers would take the guesswork and seedy melodrama out of bribery. Never again would you be made to wait around all day in the blazing sun for a roof inspector, in the hopes he was one of those who would take a payoff. Most won't.

Imagine a day in the not-so-distant future when all you do is call the building department and speak to your friendly hacker-on-the-payroll. He pulls up your company's file, taps a few words on the screen and, presto!—all your roofs are instantly inspected and approved.

Before the lid blew off at Dade's building department, cybercorruption was spreading rapidly. Investigators are examining 3,000 cases for clues of electronic tampering, and there are plenty.

For instance, the county's computer lists 18 air-conditioning jobs inspected on a Saturday. The only problem is, air-conditioning inspectors don't work on Saturdays.

If the hackers weren't especially careful, they probably knew they didn't need to be. Officials who uncovered the fraud waited more than a year before notifying the police.

With that kind of ragged oversight, and some clever software, it's conceivable that an entire subdivision could be cleared, built, sold and occupied without a single legitimate inspector setting foot on the property.

The people who bought homes there would never find out the truth, unless a hurricane came and blew off their roofs and knocked down their walls.

In which event, Dade building officials better pray the storm is big enough to knock out the computer's memory, too. That's the one thing that could byte them where it counts.

With only five weeks to hurricane season, the Legislature has taken the first step toward weakening some important post-Andrew construction reforms.

The House has given preliminary approval to a mind-boggling law that would prohibit local governments from imposing some building rules stricter than those required by the state.

They ought to call it the Roofers-from-Hell Relief Act.

It's aimed largely at Dade County, which had (for obvious reasons) imposed tougher regulations for overseeing construction.

Dade had taken the radical position that people who put houses together should know what they're doing, or have a supervisor who does. For instance, the county now requires one licensed journeyman for every three unlicensed workers on a job.

Builders didn't like the rule, so they enlisted two friendly politicians to shoot it down—Sen. Fred Dudley of Fort Myers and Rep. Carlos Lacasa of Miami.

Remember those names the next time you open your homeowner's insurance and wonder why the premium is so high.

Perhaps Lacasa and Dudley didn't read the Dade grand jury's report on Hurricane Andrew, but you can bet State Farm did. Among the panel's recommendations were stiffer qualifications for construction workers, to help weed out incompetents.

Lacasa says Dade's journeyman rule is burdensome and unnecessary, because plumbers and electricians—the trades most affected by it—weren't responsible for buildings blown apart during Hurricane Andrew.

He's right, but those who were responsible should be equally tickled by Lacasa and Dudley's legislation. If it passes, local communities will find it hard, if not impossible, to independently crack down on unqualified roofers, masons and carpenters.

That's because the proposed law would block Dade and other counties from adopting any "professional qualification requirements relating to contractors or their work force … "

Parroting industry lobbyists, Lacasa blames a flawed code—not crummy construction—for Andrew's devastation. This guy should be a poster boy for short-term memory loss syndrome.

Does the name Country Walk ring a bell? Among the rubble of that development was ample evidence of slipshod and reckless work—trusses without braces, braces without nails, and more.

In fact, serious construction mistakes were documented at virtually every subdivision that had been leveled by the storm. While the building code wasn't perfect, at least it called for roofs to be strapped securely to houses—an inconvenience, apparently, for a few builders.

So widespread was the problem of bungled workmanship that hundreds of Dade homeowners sued, and some of the area's largest developers agreed to settle out of court.

None of this escaped the notice of insurance companies, which had taken a $16 billion hit from the 1992 hurricane. Some firms pulled out of Florida, and those that stayed raised their property rates astronomically.

Dade's building reforms came after lengthy public hearings with plenty of expert testimony. Even the politicians seemed to understand that a stronger, better enforced code not only would save lives and property, it could lead to lower insurance rates.

Don't get your hopes up now. Lobbyists for the home-building industry are pushing Metro to roll back some of the post-Andrew changes, and to weaken the code enforcement office.

Similar forces are behind the foolish Lacasa-Dudley bill. How dare Dade try to protect people from construction rip-offs! That's a job for the Legislature.

Which clearly needs some firsthand experience with hurricanes. On the eve of a new season, we can only hope.

A true news item: In only five months, Dade County Manager Merrett Stierheim and his successor, Sergio Pereira, spent $63,674 furnishing the same office twice.

Harry Hassock, Dade County's newly appointed Curator of Fine Furniture, was steamed.

"Why do you people keep picking on us?" he screeched, waving the newspaper.

I could barely see the man over his teakwood desk, which was nine feet high and tastefully trimmed with polished emeralds.

"Mr. Hassock, we're not picking on anyone," I shouted up to him. "It's just that the taxpayers are getting upset. They see Mr. Pereira running all over town preaching for a sales tax hike and warning that Metro is going broke. It's hard to take him too seriously after he spends $9,000 on a sofa."

"The man needs a place to nap!" Harry said, peremptorily.

"But for that kind of money you could feed and house a homeless child for a year."

Harry Hassock winced. "Please, we're talking leather here. The finest leather from the finest cows in Argentina. And get your notebook off of there—that's a $9,999 coffee table!"

In exasperation I said, "One more time, explain to me why Sergio needed to buy an expensive round desk instead of keeping Merrett's expensive rectangular one."

"Because there was chewing gum stuck under all the drawers," Harry said. "Besides, Sergio is a round thinker. You can't put a round thinker at a rectangular desk—it would be disaster. Hey, what's that crud in my ashtray?"