AIA|WA Opposes Move of SBCC to Labor and Industries

The AIA/WA testified in the House Community, Economic Development, Trade Committee today, Jan. 20, regarding HB 2658. Section eight of HB 2658 proposes to move the State Building Code Council (SBCC) to the Department of Labor and Industries (L&I).

Primarily, the AIA/WA opposes the move because there is a conflict between the function of L&I and the role of the SBCC. The SBCC does not conduct any enforcement activities. Whereas, L&I is enforcement oriented. In order to be effective the SBCC must combine divergent views to create codes that are proper, safe and able to be implemented; this requires independence from enforcement.

The AIA/WA is also opposed because this transfer is unnecessary to save funds and could be greatly disruptive. The SBCC is self-funded through fees so this move has no fiscal impact. Currently, the SBCC is successful in the Department of Commerce, especially in regard to the synergy it has created with energy efficiency programs.

This was not a shift that was determined by a stakeholder process, unlike other changes suggested in the legislation. You can see testimony by AIA/WA Executive Director, Stan Bowman, below.

House Passes Study Bill for Home Inspector Licensing

Today the House passed Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5788 to study whether and in what manner the state should to license home inspectors. Problems in residential construction have been a reoccurring issue in this year’s legislature. The Senate earlier passed a version of the bill to mandate licensure. The AIA/WA was successful in ensuring that the new license would not impact architects and engineers as it came out of the Senate. Even though the vote was very strong out of the Senate (45-2) deep divisions existed within the home inspection community over the details of the licensing proposal. The House Commerce & Labor committee replaced the Senate language with a “sunrise review” study by the Department of Licensing. The DOL is to report back its findings by December 1, 2007. The issue is likely to come back in 2008.

ESSB 5788 now goes back to the Senate to vote on concurrence with the House amendments.

Crane Safety Hearing

The House Commerce & Labor Committee and the Senate Labor Commerce, Research and Development Committee held a joint hearing on crane safety. The hearing comes after a high profile collapse of a crane in Bellevue and several other cranes had problems as well.

Legislators are investigating the need for crane operator licensing, increasing crane inspections before and after assembly, more frequents inspections during operations, and other steps to increase crane safety. AIA/WA is working with our coalition partners in the engineering and construction organizations to monitor this bill’s progress.

Legislation has not been introduced on this topic, but stakeholders testifying at the hearing pledged to work cooperatively toward ideas to improve crane safety.

Go to www.tvw.org and enter "crane safety" in the search engine to listen to the hearing.