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- A Must Read Letter to Jeb Bush Re: HB 1307 By Neil K. Melick, CBO |
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Governor Jeb Bush Re: HB 1307 In a presentation by Julia Shaw to the Accessibility Advisory Council, she presented several issues that promulgated the addition to HB 1307 in reference to the 20% disproportionate cost. Those issues were: 1. Building officials are not sending cases to the Council and Commission for waivers or there would be a lot more cases submitted; 2. Building officials were denying the applicants the right to request a waiver; and 3. Previous Commission decisions for waiver requests reflect that those cases denied a waiver were primarily below 20% disproportionate cost and those approved were above 20% disproportionate cost. I want to address each of these issues individually as follows: 1. If building officials are not enforcing the code and requiring applicants to go to the Council and Commission for vertical accessibility waivers, then they need to be disciplined pursuant to Florida Statutes, Chapter 468, Part XII. Changing the Statute will not correct this problem and will adversely impact the disabled community. If they can verify the fact that building officials are not enforcing, then they can find those that need to be disciplined. The statement that there would be a lot more cases if building officials were enforcing is also an invalid argument. As the Building Official for the City of West Palm Beach for the last 6 plus years, I have only sent two cases for vertical accessibility waivers. The rest have complied or were found to be exempt pursuant to the exemptions allowed by the code or were worked out to meet the requirements of the Florida Accessibility Code, Section 2.2 or the Florida Building Code, Section 11-2.2. Both of which have the same title and read as follows: Equivalent Facilitation. Departures from particular technical and scoping requirements of this code by the use of other designs and technologies are permitted where the alternative designs and technologies used will provide substantially equivalent or greater access to and usability of the facility. An example of this is where an applicant makes the claim that installing an elevator is too expensive, a ramp takes up too much valuable floor space and the elevation is too high for the use of a LULA. The recommended solution is to construct an elevated platform (just high enough to allow the use of a LULA from that point) with a minimal ramp or secondary LULA to the elevated platform. This solves all the problems and ensures vertical accessibility is provided. 2. If building officials are denying applicants the opportunity to go before the Council and Commission, then that too is a disciplinary issue. First of all, there is no statutory requirement or administrative rule that an applicant needs to have the permission or authority of the building official to go for a waiver. The required application has a place for the building official's comments and signature, but is not required. In fact, many of the submitted waiver applications do not even have that portion of the application completed. 3. As for the determination that waiver cases being approved were primarily those with more than 20% disproportionate cost and waivers denied were less than 20%, that is probably a correct statement - if we are talking about those cases approved by the Commission and not by recommendation of the Council and if the statistics were taken prior to January 2002. Since then, the Council has done a better job in making recommendations and giving time to comply. Since January, I know that the majority of the vertical accessibility cases have been granted with condition that vertical accessibility be provided within a specified time. None of these cases even dealt with disproportionate cost. With the signing of HB 1307, this type of option would not be available and vertical accessibility will not be obtained. Just to bring one more issue to light, it is important to note that by approving HB 1307, it will be allowing private providers to do plan review and inspections for public safety, health and general welfare in the built environment with a lesser degree of responsibility than that required by local governments. Specifically, Florida Statutes, Chapter 468, Part XII, Section 468.604 (2) and (3), requires inspectors and plan reviewers to " ensure compliance with the Florida Building Code." Under HB 1307, private providers only have to complete an affidavit stating "that the following is true and correct to the best of the private provider's knowledge and belief." It goes on to state that the plans were reviewed and comply with the applicable code. In the case of private provider inspections, the private provider must submit a certificate of compliance that states "to the best of my knowledge and belief, the building components and site improvements outlined herein and inspected under my authority have been completed in conformance with the approved plans and the applicable code." Are we providing the same level of protection to the public we serve if private providers are not held to the same degree of responsibility? This all adds to the justification to veto HB 1307. Please study the facts and veto this bill. Sincerely, |
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