On Tuesday, the Senate Labor and Industry Committee held a hearing on Sen. Charles McIlhinney's bill that attempts to address the dysfunction in the state's building code adoption process.
The McIlhinney bill would return Pennsylvania to a process whereby codes are automatically adopted unless two-thirds of the members of the Uniform Construction Code Review and Advisory Council (RAC) vote to reject them. Equally critical, the bill would force the RAC to re-review its decision to reject all of the 2012 International Construction Code (ICC) updates.
At the hearing, there was unanimous consensus that Pennsylvania's building code adoption process needs to be fixed. What the appropriate fix is, well, that was the source of great debate -- and will determine whether Pennsylvania has safe, well-constructed, energy efficient buildings or if the state's building codes lag behind and remain out of date.
According to RAC Chairman Frank Thompson and the Pennsylvania Builders Association (PBA) -- the latter an influential interest group of home builders -- the answer is simple. Fix an already slow, dysfunctional, process by making it glacially slow.
After choosing not to adopt any of the hundreds of common-sense code updates in 2012, their solution is to put off making any new code decisions until 2016 -- by changing the code adoption cycle from three to six years. Senator McIlhinney, a Bucks County Republican, described this solution as "ridiculous." [Hint: He's right.]
McIlhinney's proposed fix: Streamline the process by restoring Pennsylvania to a system where updated codes are automatically adopted unless a two-thirds majority of the RAC votes them out. People in the know call this the "opt-out" process. This would allow for hundreds of common-sense (often, simply semantic) code changes to take effect, while allowing for substantive analysis on proposed changes that merit debate.
Equally important, it would mandate that the RAC do its job and re-examine the 2012 code changes. In 2012, the RAC failed to perform the required analysis for code changes and, inconsistent with the law, arbitrarily voted not to adopt any of the 2012 codes. Hundreds of changes to the building codes recommended by the ICC were summarily rejected. These rejected changes include building and safety improvements in addition to updated energy efficiency standards.
Pennsylvania Builders Association (PBA) representative Joe Mingioni, who was also on the RAC in 2012 when it rejected the updates, admitted as much at Tuesday's hearing. He said that the decision not to adopt any new codes in 2012 was a "policy statement" rather than a decision against each code update on its merit.
The former RAC member's moment of candor -- admitting that the group failed to follow the analysis requirements of the law and instead rejected each and every code update in a policy statement -- begs a couple key questions: What would prevent the RAC from making another policy statement in 2016 and again dismissing all code changes? Why is it reasonable to assume that 19 political appointees with no staff could possibly analyze hundreds of code changes and reach a two-thirds majority on each? Why has Pennsylvania decided to give so much regulatory authority to an unelected, industry-dominated advisory committee, rather than keeping the final say with the Department of Labor and Industry?
One suspects that the RAC as currently constituted will never meet a set of code changes it likes -- and codes in Pennsylvania could remain anchored in 2009 since it will always be easier for the RAC to take no action than to reach a two-thirds consensus. (This theory was borne out in 2012.)
PBA's Mingioni also complained that "special interests" (read: manufacturers of energy efficiency products) were driving the attempt to fix the RAC process. We'll let that sink in for a moment...a powerful and well-connected special interest group standing in the way of progress is complaining that special interests are trying to change the process. Pot, meet kettle. If any special interest has a strangle-hold on the process, it's the home builders and their allies.
By the way, the number of energy efficiency representatives on the nineteen-member RAC? Zero.
If you support safe and energy efficient buildings in Pennsylvania, visit BuildItSafe.org and take action.
