AUSTIN — Whenever a natural disaster hits North Texas, ravaging homes and causing other damage, the phones at Southlake Rep. Giovanni Capriglione's office start ringing.

Many of those calls are from homeowners who have paid thousands of dollars to have their damaged roofs repaired only to see contractors take off with their money after leaving repairs incomplete or poorly finished.

“There is a significant number of scammers who come into these disaster areas from out of the state, out of the area, and promise to fix people’s roofs,” Capriglione said. “What happens unfortunately sometimes is that a homeowner ends up having lost their money, or they’ll end up with a partially completed roof, or a roof that’s got shoddy workmanship.”

The Republican has filed a bill to help protect consumers from this predatory practice by requiring all roofers in Texas to register with the state.

“We need proof of your name and proof of your address. That’s it,” he said. “It’s the least we can ask if you’re going to put a roof over someone’s head.”

Capriglione has tried to pass bills to clamp down on sham roofers in the past, but the political climate of the state, which opposes any move that looks like industry regulation, has thwarted those attempts. This year, with many Texans still reeling from Hurricane Harvey and Capriglione pushing a less burdensome type of regulation — registration rather than licensing — his bill could pick up momentum.

Under the proposal, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation would create and maintain a database of registered roofers that would include names, mailing addresses, phone numbers and any complaints filed against the businesses. Roofers would be required to disclose their state registration number in any advertisement or contract so a customer could search for them in the database.

“It is amazing to me how many people oppose that,” Capriglione said. “Why would anyone oppose [disclosing] what your name is and where your business is? Only people who are afraid of a customer wanting to go and talk to them.”

Roofers would pay a fee not to exceed $250 for a two-year registration and not to exceed $100 for a renewal. County and municipal building officials would need proof of that registration to grant a roofer a building or construction permit.

To some, the requirements seem ominous and sound like government regulation.

“This is not a simple registration bill. It looks an awful lot like a licensing bill,” said Carl Isett, a representative for the Texas Independent Roofing Contractors Association and a former state lawmaker. “This is a de facto licensing bill.”

Isett said current law covers some of the issues the bill aims to tackle. Scammers can be prosecuted under fraud laws, and the bill has exemptions for emergency declarations that would do nothing to deter so-called storm chaser roofers, he said.

But because of an added barrier of entry to the industry and lack of outreach from the state, small businesses would suffer if the bill is passed, he added.

“If it is just a guy with a truck and a ladder, they’ll never know this bill passed,” he said, and they would be subject to punishment for not realizing that not registering was a crime.

Capriglione said the sanctions in the bill — a Class C misdemeanor and the state’s right to issue cease and desist orders — are necessary for enforcement. Otherwise, the bill has no teeth against fraudsters.

“You can’t just say ‘Sign up for this website or else,’” he said. “This is going to be a requirement just like it is for other types of registrations. You can’t operate on someone or practice law. This is a public safety issue. If you try to put a roof over someone’s head without a license, you should face a penalty.”

Capriglione said he thinks the registration fees will come down once a fiscal analysis note is received from the state’s Legislative Budget Board. “We’re going to make the fee equal to the cost,” he said. “We don’t want the state making any money off this.”

And he would push for licensing requirements if he thought they were feasible — he’s filed those bills in the past. But because stakeholders have rejected that idea, Capriglione thinks this bill is the right path forward. It's got the support of the Roofing Contractors Association of Texas, he noted, which has more than 600 members.

“Every legitimate roofer in Texas has what is required in the application,” he said. “That doesn’t hurt anyone.”

Steven J. Badger, a Dallas lawyer who has sued sham roofers in North Texas, said Capriglione's proposal amounted to a "consumer protection bill." The measure is needed, he said, because of cases like one in Dallas-Fort Worth in which a roofer stole more than $570,000 from 117 people, mostly minority and elderly people. That roofer continues to work under a different name, he said.

“It gives us a mechanism to police bad conduct and get it out of the system for the benefit of all Texas consumers,” Badger said.