Licensing Panel for Contractors Reverses Policy : Consumers: The state board will expand its investigation of complaints. It will also provide information about past disputes.

In a victory for frustrated consumers, the state agency charged with overseeing building contractors said Friday that it will begin investigating complaints against contractors who use private arbitration to settle disputes with customers.

The decision reverses a 5-year-old policy that board officials have said was implemented to conserve agency funds and speed up processing of other complaints.

The Contractors State License Board also said Friday that it will ensure that information about citations, license revocations and suspensions and other legal judgments against contractors is provided to consumers who call the agency’s toll-free information line to check on the status of a contractor’s license. Previously, such information was often not provided.

The board, charged by law with licensing and regulating the building trades professions, has been under fire in recent months for abandoning its role as a consumer protection agency.

The agreement to pursue investigations of complaints against contractors who use arbitration could mean a huge increase in the number of cases the board’s 20 investigators must review each year.

In the 12 months ended June 30, the contractors board received 31,500 complaints against builders. But articles in The Times last month revealed that employees of the board have refused on many occasions to even accept a complaint when the contract called for arbitration.

The Times also reported that the board’s hands-off policy enabled one custom-home builder in Orange County to use arbitration to maintain an unblemished license despite scores of lawsuits and arbitration judgments.

The board, which licenses and regulates nearly 275,000 contractors in California, changed its policies after the Assembly’s consumer protection committee held an eight-hour hearing Wednesday in Sacramento to collect consumers’ testimony about problems they had had with the board.

A key witness at the hearing was Regina Lamourelle, a Mission Viejo woman who fought for nearly five years with her contractor and the license board over remedies for shoddy work.

Among other things, the board failed to inform Lamourelle of several suits against the contractor when she asked about the status of his license, refused to investigate her complaints against the builder only because her contract called for arbitration of disputes, and refused to suspend the contractor’s license when he failed to tell the board, as required by law, that Lamourelle had won a $100,000 arbitration judgment against his company. The contractor has declined to discuss the case.

In a report issued this week, the legislative committee’s chief consultant, Michael Miiller, said license board employees repeatedly told his investigators they did not view representing consumers as a part of their jobs.

Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-South San Francisco), who chairs the committee, said Friday that the agreement to begin investigating all legitimate complaints is “a major win for consumers.”

License board officials could not be reached for comment Friday.