Conditioned for Success

To understand why there are so many fly-by-night air-conditioning repairmen out there, consider Theodore Etzel III's dilemma.

Etzel is a man who plays by the rules. The president and CEO of Conditioned Air of Naples recently won the Business Ethics Award from the Uncommon Friends Foundation in Fort Myers.

But the regulatory environment is so difficult in places such as Collier County and enforcement is so lax that executives like Etzel who abide by the rules get unnecessarily penalized. That's because competitors routinely skirt the rules to avoid regulatory costs — and they get away with it.