Can an engineer practice with a felony conviction in California?

Will an employee of a municipality who is a licensed PE and who has just recently been convicted of a felony be allowed to practice?  The engineer I am referring to is employed by a municipality outside my area, but this engineer has an open complaint with BORPELS for nearly five years. He was recently convicted of a felony and was an employee in one of the county offices outside our area. He was convicted of taking bribes to accelerate the plan review for pool permits in his county and he pleaded guilty. I notices from the article I read that he was tried by the felony division of the county and has been given 300 hours of community service, a stiff fine and he can not hold public office or work for any municipality in the state.

 

Will BORPELS pick upon on this automatically, or is he still allowed to practice since he was not found incompetent, only ethically and morally untrustworthy? I have a compliant filed for another engineer with BORPELS and I believe the complaint I filed nearly five years ago that has not been acted upon yet due to loss of financial support from the state has delayed all complaints. However, this is the engineer who is wet stamping the drawings of the non-engineer who is representing himself as a Structural Consultant and is not licensed. It occurred to me after putting two and two together following a comment I heard a local contractor tell this engineer during a seminar I attended over a year ago that the non-engineer may have been given a second stamp and allowed by the engineer who was convicted to seal drawings. The non-engineer has the education and work experience to take the exams but is older and has not applied to take the exams as he worked for a company that did not require him to be licensed. Once he was laid off, he found the need but not the time or the desire and proceeded to set up his company under his own name but using one engineer for a number of years to wet seal all work he has done. The quality of some of his work is questionable – other work he does he seems to be qualified.

 

Without getting into the PE vs. SE debate in California, I only wish to know if anyone who has knowledge what the California Business and Professional Act has to say about the engineer convicted of a felony? I am cleaning up one of his messes now and have sent a copy of the problem to BORPELS to add to my previous complaint. BORPELS did contact the non-engineer to remind him that he can not operate a firm that is in his name and call it an engineering firm. Rather than have his full name in the Chapter S corporation firms local listings, he shortened it to his initials and BORPELS has left him alone. When I questioned this with the board they indicated that they were not going to come down on PE’s who advertise in the SE section of the phone book since they have attempted to remedy the section name in the Yellow pages and left as frustrated as most of use who are left with Civil or Consulting Engineer that restricts business. Furthermore, they believe that the advent of consulting firms that team up creates the potential for problems with the rules related to under direct supervision and have taken a step back on this to bring it up with the times. They feel that there is no way to enforce laws such as direct supervision when drawings can claim to be sent over the Internet and that this allows the lead engineer to review the work from an additional location. I am sure that providing a stamp and giving the authority to use it to a non-engineer in another office is not in the intent of the business code. However, the way they have delayed addressing this complaint the other party is the luckiest guy on earth.

 

Any comment or suggestion (interpretation of the code) would be greatly appreciated.

 

Dennis