BY BRUCE SICELOFF – Staff Writer, New Observer
RALEIGH — David N. Cox says he was merely exercising his right to petition the government, but a state Department of Transportation official has raised allegations that Cox committed a misdemeanor: practicing engineering without a license.
Cox and his North Raleigh neighbors are lobbying city and state officials to add traffic signals at two intersections as part of a planned widening of Falls of Neuse Road.
After an engineering consultant hired by the city said that the signals were not needed, Cox and the North Raleigh Coalition of Homeowners’ Associations responded with a sophisticated analysis of their own.
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The eight-page document with maps, diagrams and traffic projections was offered to buttress their contention that signals will be needed at the Falls of Neuse at Coolmore Drive intersection and where the road meets Tabriz Point / Lake Villa Way.
It did not persuade Kevin Lacy, chief traffic engineer for the state DOT, to change his mind about the project. Instead, Lacy called on a state licensing agency, the N.C. Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors, to investigate Cox.
Cox says Lacy is trying to squelch dissent.
"All we ever tried to do was express our view about this," said Cox, a computer scientist. "We never expected something like this. We think it’s wrong. We’re just trying to make our neighborhood safe."
Lacy said his complaint "was not an accusation" against Cox.
"I’m not trying to hush him up," Lacy said.
Cox has not been accused of claiming that he is an engineer. But Lacy says he filed the complaint because the report "appears to be engineering-level work" by someone who is not licensed as a professional engineer.
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Andrew L. Ritter, executive director of the engineers licensing board, said it will take three or four months to investigate Lacy’s allegation against Cox. He said there is a potential for violation if DOT and the public were misled by "engineering-quality work"- even if the authors did not claim to be engineers.
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https://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/03/964781/citizen-activist-grates-on-state.htmloldId.2011020819522923
2 Replies to “Citizen activist gets accused of practicing engineering without a license”
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I just got my engineer-in-training certificate. (In another state.) This case is crap. There is no law against doing "engineering level work" on anything. There are laws requiring certain engineering design documents to be signed by professional licensed engineers, and the clearly is not the case here.
Actually, even though this is a complaint to the licensing board, the computer scientist could file a lawsuit against the agency/person filing the complaint on First Amendment grounds. A lot of the time government agencies are exempt from lawsuits, but not when it’s a violation of Constitutional law.