Rep. Donna Rowland (R-34) tried to exclude Rutherford County from a bipartisan bill that would create statewide building construction safety standards and promote energy efficiency savings for working families.
Several rural counties in Tennessee have no home construction safety standards for one-family and two-family dwellings. The bill would protect residents from builders who place families at risk to maximize their own profits.
Rep. Rowland said establishing basic safety and energy efficiency standards in Rutherford County to protect the lives of homeowners and save them money on energy costs would present an unnecessary burden on home builders. After hearing Rep. Rowland’s argument today on behalf of her major donors, Rep. Rowland’s House constituents voted against her amendment, and it failed.
Rep. Kent Coleman (D-49) and Rep. Curt Cobb (D-62) are co-sponsors of the bill. Here is what the bill would do to protect working families and save them money:
Beginning July 1, 2010, this amendment applies the statewide building construction safety standards established by the state fire marshal to one-family and two-family dwellings, unless the local government has adopted the International Residential Code for such dwellings. Under present law, one-family and two-family dwellings are exempt from the statewide standards. The full text of this amendment establishes a process for appointment of deputy building inspectors to conduct safety standards compliance inspections of one-family and two-family dwellings.
Also, beginning July 1, 2010, this amendment requires that the statewide building construction safety standards must include energy efficiency standards. This amendment prohibits the state fire marshal from including in the standards a mandatory requirement that one-family and two-family dwellings have sprinklers; provided, however, that local governments will be authorized to adopt more stringent standards for such dwellings.
I feel the need to say that Rowland was not even close to being the only one to try and do this. This bill has 38 amendments, at least, and most of them are doing the exact same thing, trying to take a particular representatives district out of the bill. All of them failed except for the one Democrat who offered the same type of amendment. The rest were offered by Republicans, and failed. I am not defending the repubs here, or attacking the Dems. I like the legislation… but I thought that it should be known that a LOT of reps were trying to take their counties out of this bill, and they all failed to do so, thus far. It is curious that the only one to successfully pull their county out was a Dem.