Hey Bill,
In IL once your a registered EC in one place you should not have to pay in any other place. You also should not ave to pay more then $25 for this fee. IL statute ch.24, par.11-33-1. That said it's not how it works in some places. Sometimes the smaller the village the more they want to charge you for the privlage of doing work. I always try to point out that such charges allowed under IL law. I provide a copy of the law with all other papers I give the village. Some places I believe it was just an oversite of their legal department. Some maybe just know but wait for the EC to speak up. While others could care less what the laws are and your forced to pay. Sometimes they will just say it's not an EC registration fee or EC liciance fee but a bisness licence fee to do work in their town. To make things worse most just expire at the end of the year so sometime you don't get much time on it.
With a call to the village or maybe on the internet it is not to difficult to find their registration fee and bond requirment. The trouble is sometimes a job comes up so fast or after hours you can't price out the fees. It should be paid for by the customer but the differance of opinion here comes into how to figure it in. I add $100 into the price of projects for this. A few times it's more then needed and other times I'm short. It's easy to add a line item for this but like you said a few have a problem with this.
The permit fees is something totaly different. Most places here can't even give you a price for the permits when you apply. Many figure the price when the permit application and plans are reviewed which can take a week or more. There is no way to price this out. Unless you applied for a permit on every job you bid out and had the time to wait. I don't think the building dept. would like that. All GC's I worked for paid permit fee's. I think many villages make the GC picking up the permit pay all the fee's at the same time.
Also be carefull with the wording. Sometimes the permit cost is not so bad but they get you on everything elce. Permit review fee, inspection fees, deposit refundable maybe next year, overweight truck permits, and maybe even reinspection fees.
Sometimes I just added some $ to a HO bid to cover permits. I just had a generator permit that may cost around $550. I'm learning. No more permits included for me.
As far as a lien if your contracted stated the GC should pay the $175 then you have a right to collect the $. The lien papers are not that hard and it will cost you about $20 to do. I would spend the time and $ if someone owed me $175.
You have to concider your relationship with the GC and the end customer. A lien for $175 would sour any relationship. If that is not a concern then fist send an intent to file lien letter to the customer and a bill for $175. Maybe that will be enough. If not lien away.
Tom
