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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2013 - 2014
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | February 28, 2014 03:07 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Samuel H. Smith |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Proposed Legislation Amending the Pennsylvania Construction Code Act (Act 45 of 1999) |
| In the very near future, I plan to introduce legislation to amend the Pennsylvania Construction Code Act (Act 45 of 1999) to give local code administrators more flexibility in issuing certificates of occupancy to "uncertified" buildings. This proposed change to the law is the direct result of input to me from several local codes administrators in my district. The Pennsylvania Construction Code Act created the Uniform Construction Code (UCC) which is the statewide building code. The UCC went into effect on April 10, 2004. In 2004 the Department of Labor & Industry made the administrative determination that existing buildings which did not ever obtain a certificate of occupancy under the prior Fire & Panic Act or other municipal ordinance were "illegal buildings". The department made the policy decision that "illegal" buildings must meet the new construction requirements of the UCC, which meant that they had to meet current accessibility/egress/fire safety requirements. This interpretation by the department created much controversy because owners of such buildings faced very large costs to bring such buildings up to code. To clarify the confusion by this departmental interpretation, in 2005 the Legislature passed Senate Bill 736 (which was signed into law as Act 95 of 2005), which amended the Pennsylvania Construction Code Act to create a set of reasonable fire safety/egress standards that the Department of Labor & Industry could use to issue certificates of occupancy to uncertified buildings under its jurisdiction. Act 95 also made clear that code administrators in "opt in" municipalities could issue certificates of occupancy to uncertified buildings if such buildings met the requirements of the IEBC or Chapter 34 of the IBC, however, if an "opt in" municipality wanted to use the departmental technical standards, the municipality could only do so by passing an ordinance. My legislation simply amends the law to give a code administrator in an "opt in" municipality the ability to use the departmental technical standards created by Act 95 without passing an ordinance. In essence, this will bill give municipal code administrators another "tool" to work with in assisting municipalities in working with owners of uncertified buildings. This legislation was reviewed by the UCC Review and Advisory Council at its February 20th, 2014 meeting and it was endorsed by the Council. Thus, I believe I have full support for this legislation by all interested parties. |
Introduced as HB2079