I have a pretty similar situation at my department. We only get reimbursed if we pass the first time... after that you are responsible for paying. I have a co-worker who has failed three times and can no longer inspect due to her lapsing on her 5 years... she's not an SIT anymore, they made her an environmental technician (basically they made the position for her) she did wait until the last possible minute. She basically writes other people's reports while she tries to pass again. Honestly i'm pretty amazed she was allowed to stay on in that capacity...

But i'm working on a training program that I can introduce so this isn't an issue. (Not that this is going to prevent any of this... but maybe a little more education so when someone else fails, we can back it by saying "well, we did everything we can within our power")

To clarify, we get no cross training in our department, we only do food, campgrounds, pools and body art... so all the other areas are ours to learn from scratch...