Illinois Construction Stuff and Stuff

Norm Cowie, CCE

This little story starts with the first time I went to an electrical distributor’s group meeting. Or, more precisely, when I tried to. I was brand new in Chicago, having moved here from Michigan, so I was still learning my way around town when my boss, Bill, asked me to represent our company Wesco at the monthly electrical distributor’s meeting held in the dining room of a golf country club outside the city. This was before we had computerized voices in our cars and cell phones to help guide us around, and I’m going to really date myself because it was also before cell phones themselves. Yeah, it was a bit harder to get around town back then.

But Bill said it was an easy drive with just a few streets. He said, “Just take 94 to the Kennedy and…” Which to this day I say was his mistake, because where I came from, a highway had one name, not several. I knew where Route 94 was since I took that highway every time I went back to Michigan. And I knew where Kennedy Avenue was because it was the first exit in Indiana, also on the way to Michigan. I knew nothing about ‘the’ Kennedy, which I knew only by its other name, Route 90.

An hour later, much to his amusement I called him completely lost from a phone booth in Indiana.

After that belated attempt, I started attending the meetings where I got more and more uncomfortable at what some of our competitors were saying in the meeting. There was talk of future action, and other things that made me think of antitrust liabilities, so I went back to Bill and suggested we pull Wesco out of the organization. When I told him my concerns, he agreed, and we reluctantly pulled out of the group, despite the many benefits that came from being able to exchange information on joint customers. Soon after that, I took the job of Credit Manager at Evergreen Oak Electric (prior to our merger with Paramont to become Paramont-EO), but kept in

touch with my old boss, since I left on very good terms. One day we were talking and Bill mentioned NACM might be a good fit as a moderator for a new distributor’s group. I didn’t know much about NACM back then, but agreed we should give it a shot. So we contacted NACM, who gladly hosted our old group for an informational meeting, and we quickly decided it was a good fit, since NACM would help make sure we were in compliance with the anti-trust laws. Bill and I happily were able to reunite Wesco and Evergreen Oak with our former competitors in a new Electrical Distributors Credit Group, now as a part of NACM, or CMCMA as it was called back then (told you I’m dating myself).

Once I learned what NACM was all about, I started getting involved. One of my interests has always been law, so I joined the Legislative Committee and started regularly attending. Then something happened that changed me from a participant to a leader. The Bulk Sale Act, part of the UCC laws, was repealed in Illinois … without much backlash or really any input by our committee. The Bulk Sale Act protected trade creditors by making it a requirement for a company that was selling off its assets to inform its creditors. This usually indicated an insolvency might be ahead and a

So over all those decades, I became a leader rather than a follower, and NACM has always been so supportive, so open to new ideas and concepts, and frankly, just there for me.

creditor might start taking protective action.

But it quietly went away, and we never even knew it until after the fact.

It also illustrated something that I felt was a failing of the committee. We paid attention to nationwide issues like the bankruptcy law, but put little thought on state issues, like the Bulk Sale Act repeal or, more importantly to me, the Illinois Mechanics Lien Statutes.

So I went up to Bill Dearhammer, who was President of CMCMA at the time, and who attended our meetings and said, “Hi, Bill. Who decides on the agenda for our committee?” He smiled, and said, “The Chairman.”

I frowned. “Okay, so how does one go about becoming the Chairman?”” He saw where I was going with this and his smile widened. “That person would need to be on our Board of Directors.”

I nodded. “Uh, huh, so, um, how does someone get on the Board of Directors?”

Within a year I was Chairman of the Legislative Committee, and we started paying more attention to state happenings, rather than being focused on national. While it was too late in Illinois, we were able to help prevent Wisconsin from having their bulk sale act repealed. And Bill found a company that could monitor bills in Springfield that might affect us, and he’d pass them along as he received them. Sometime later, we got wind that NACM National’s Improved Construction Practices Committee was planning to come to town to discuss rewriting our lien laws to match those in Ohio, which they considered a model all states should follow. Ohio is a prenotice state, so they have to notice every job in order to have lien rights. Did you hear me? Every job. Imagine the paperwork and extra expenses required. Unless you do business in Ohio, and you wouldn’t have to imagine. Bill successfully wrangled us an invitation to the meeting, and during the meeting I explained this would cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in postage and manpower, and our lien laws were fine, and didn’t need a drastic revision. If anyone wanted to pre-lien a job in Illinois, the statutes as written didn’t prevent it. Then I asked if they had an Illinois chapter of their committee. They said they didn’t, so I offered to start one for them. To my relief, they agreed, and I quashed the whole concept of copying Ohio’s statutes in a subsequent committee meeting. I believe I might still be the embodiment of the Illinois Improved Construction Practices Committee to this day.

When they learned what a geek I was about the lien law, NACM started asking me to teach the lien statutes, so soon I was giving speeches at seminars.

When they learned what a geek I was about the lien law, NACM started asking me to teach the lien statutes, so soon I was giving speeches at seminars. Then, somewhere along the way, they learned I liked to write, and I started writing a column for their newsletter breaking down the lien statutes section by section and simplifying it so you didn’t have to be an attorney to understand it. When I got to the end of the statutes, Lillian encouraged me to keep writing and I’ve been writing this column ever since. In 2006, my articles won NACM National’s Best Article award and in 2016, NACMConnect published an assembled book of my articles. Because I wanted to be more proactive about the lien statutes I became a member of ASA’s Governmental Relations Committee, where we have introduced legislation, including the recent change that mandates retention being reduced to no more than 5% when a project is 50% completed. I also convinced my local legislator to introduce a bill that would require owners and GCs to accept conditional waivers. Unfortunately, the large banks were able to kill that idea for now. I think the reason it died is they rewrote the bill from my original draft into a mess which confused too many people. I still think my original language would have been accepted, but I dropped the idea for now, as we were fighting some other battles.

So over all those decades, I became a leader rather than a follower, and NACM has always been so supportive, so open to new ideas and concepts, and frankly, just there for me. I hope you enjoyed this little bit of history, and more, I hope it inspires you to partner with the very cooperative and energetic staff at NACM to educate yourself, protect your companies, and even more, assume the leadership mantle.

See ya later, and be careful on the Kennedy. Or you might end up in Indiana.

Norm

(BTW, My most recent book, MOONED, is now available in hardcover. MOONED is a young adult book adults can read about a dog and cat turned into were humans by their werewolf master. Fun action. Check it out on Amazon.) ■

Norman Cowie, CCE is Director of Credit for Paramont-EO, Inc. He has written articles appearing in the Chicago Tribune, Cynic Magazine, Business Credit and the Herald News. His current book titled, "The Illinois Mechanics Lien Statutes … and other construction stuff" is available for sale through NACM Connect. He also has ten published humor/ fantasy novels, some through traditional publishers Echelon Press, Quake Books and Draumr Publishing, although more recently he has transitioned over to Indie publishing. Norm can be reached at norm.cowie@paramont-eo. com, or feel free to visit him at www.normcowie.com which features past NACM Connect articles.