Is Your Contractor Registered? What Washington's Records Show for Clark County

Key numbers

About 1 in 9 active and suspended registrations is suspended; the share is 9% to 13% in every mailing city

The share of suspended registrations ranges from 9.1% to 12.5% across Clark County's mailing cities. Vancouver ZIP codes, which include unincorporated Hazel Dell, Orchards, Salmon Creek and Felida, hold 2,810 of the county's 4,382 active registrations.

Suspended share of active and suspended registrationsClark County overall

Counts are construction contractor registrations (chapter 18.27 RCW). Electrical contractors (375 active) and plumbing contractors (159 active) with Clark County addresses are licensed separately and are in the CSV.

What "active", "suspended" and "expired" mean

• Active: the registration is current, with a surety bond and liability insurance on file with L&I. On November 13, 2026, 4,374 of the 4,382 active Clark County registrations had a current bond on file and 4,377 had current insurance on file in L&I's bond and insurance datasets.
• Suspended: the registration exists but may not be used. A cancelled bond or a lapsed insurance policy suspends a registration automatically (RCW 18.27.040(1), RCW 18.27.050(2)). Washington law makes it a gross misdemeanor to advertise, bid or work while a registration is suspended (RCW 18.27.020(2)(b)).
• Expired: the registration ran out and was not renewed. 707 Clark County construction registrations expired in the 12 months to November 13, 2026.

Most suspensions are recent: 463 of the 560 suspended registrations were suspended in 2026. The open data does not say why a registration was suspended. L&I's Verify tool shows the details for each business.

How long have Clark County contractors been registered?

The open data records the date each current registration number took effect. By that measure, 28.0% of active Clark County registrations are less than 2 years old.

A new registration is not a warning sign by itself: new businesses open every year, and an established company that changes its legal form gets a new number. It is a reason to ask how long the people behind the business have been doing this work, and under which names. Verify lists past business names.

Of the 1,057 active specialty registrations, the most common trades for home projects are floor covering and countertops (138), painting (131), landscaping (80), tile and stone (74), cabinets and finish carpentry (70). A specialty contractor works in one trade; a remodel that needs more than one trade under one job is general contractor work (RCW 18.27.010).

What the bond and insurance cover, and what they don't

Every registered contractor must carry a surety bond of $30,000 (general contractor) or $15,000 (specialty contractor) (RCW 18.27.040(1)). On November 13, 2026, 3,320 of the 3,325 active Clark County general contractor registrations had a $30,000 bond on file.

• The bond is shared by everyone with a claim against that contractor, including workers and suppliers, and the surety never pays more than the bond amount in total (RCW 18.27.040(4)). The required notice to customers says so in capital letters: the bond "might not be sufficient to cover a claim" (RCW 18.27.114(1)).
• Liability insurance must be at least $50,000 for property damage, $100,000 for injury to one person and $200,000 for injury to more than one person (RCW 18.27.050(1)). Of the active Clark County registrations with current insurance on file, 96.0% (4,202) listed $1,000,000 or more.
• Liability insurance covers damage and injuries the contractor causes. It is not a guarantee of workmanship or of finishing the job.
• Since July 1, 2026, Washington's homeowner recovery program can pay up to $25,000 per contractor per parcel to a homeowner who won a court judgment over work on their primary residence, went after the contractor's bond first and still was not paid in full. Payments depend on available funds and are at L&I's discretion (RCW 18.27.410(2), (3)).

How to check a contractor in five minutes

1. Search the business name, registration number or UBI on L&I's Verify a Contractor tool. Washington calls it a "registration"; L&I's own pages also say "license".
2. Confirm the status says active, and that the name and address match the bid you were given.
3. Look at the bond and insurance sections, the history of lawsuits against the bond, the workers' comp account and any violations (what Verify shows).
4. For jobs of $1,000 or more on a home, the contractor must give you a signed "Notice to Customer" disclosure before work starts (RCW 18.27.114(1)). Keep your copy.
5. Check again before each payment. A registration can be suspended during a job.
6. Hiring a Portland-area contractor for a Clark County home? They need an active Washington registration too. For work in Oregon, look up the Oregon license on the Construction Contractors Board search.

What this means for Clark County homeowners

• A registration that was active when you got the bid can be suspended before the job ends: 496 Clark County registrations were suspended in the past 12 months. Check on the day you sign and before each payment.
• Suspension follows the paperwork that protects you: when the bond or the insurance lapses, the registration is suspended automatically. A suspended contractor has no valid registration to work under.
• The bond is small next to a remodel budget and is shared with every other claimant, so treat it as a legal minimum. L&I's own advice is to get a written contract, pay as phases of the work are finished and collect lien releases before the final payment (Hire Smart).
• Contractors based across the river are common: 3,729 businesses with Oregon addresses are registered in Washington. Check the Washington registration for a Clark County job and the Oregon CCB license for a Portland job.

Method

• Data: Washington State Department of Labor & Industries, "L&I Contractor License Data" on data.wa.gov: General, Bond and Insurance datasets. Snapshot of November 13, 2026, the day L&I last updated the dataset before we downloaded it (161,719 registrations statewide in the General file).
• Clark County: a registration counts if its business address is in Washington and its ZIP code is one of the 19 ZIP code areas with more than half of their population in Clark County (Census ZCTA-to-county relationship file), or one of the county's P.O. box ZIP codes (98666, 98668 and 98687 in Vancouver, 98622 in Heisson). Woodland's 98674 is left out because most of its population is in Cowlitz County.
• Who is counted: construction contractor registrations (type CC) with the status shown on the snapshot date. General = L&I specialty code 01; all other codes are specialty contractors. Each registration number is counted once; 4,357 distinct businesses (UBI numbers) hold the 4,382 active registrations.
• Bond and insurance: a bond or policy counts as current if it took effect on or before the snapshot date and had not been cancelled or expired by then.
• Next update: we plan to repeat the count each quarter on a fixed date and keep the earlier figures.

Limits

• The address is where the business is registered, not where it works. Many Clark County jobs are done by contractors based elsewhere, and some local contractors work mostly in Oregon.
• The data shows status, not quality. An active registration means the legal minimums are on file, not that the work will be good.
• The open data does not give the reason for a suspension. We publish counts only and do not name any business.
• L&I updates the data daily, so a lookup on another day will give slightly different numbers.