Probably would not help the case in the article where the code enforcer, on his own, decided to just constantly go look for problems once he found an easy victim. The root problem seems to be spelled out in the article:

> One former city official with experience in Codes enforcement, who also asked not to be named, said the laws are vague enough that inspectors could easily find violations at every home in the city, including his own and those of other Codes inspectors.

When you have a law that is written such that everyone is breaking it, you can just send people out to harvest fines from anyone you don’t like.