Sacramento Report
By Ron Kingston

What a Difference a Few Days Make

During the past few days, bills that would have had a substantial adverse impact on a landlord’s ability to conduct business have been amended.

Here are a few examples of what occurred before the Legislature within the last few weeks.

For a number of years, a statewide trade association has persistently tried to successfully sponsor a bill that would statutorily address water submeters in multiunit buildings.

This year, that association is sponsoring SB 1518 (Correa), which was heard before the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee in early April.

During the hearing in the Senate, we expressed deep concern that the bill should not require the installation of water submeters in existing construction. The committee and author agreed that the bill would be amended to assure that water submeters would only be required on newly constructed units.

This amendment avoids a multi-million dollar retrofit mandate for each landlord that currently has a master water meter.

Additionally, we expressed our policy concerns for current landlords of multi-unit structures that do not have water submeters and who want to separately bill. Under the provision, those landlords would be forced to allocate water consumption on a formula that is not statistically valid and could not be supported by actual water usage.

For example, we did not see the correlation between the amount of water used by a household and square footage, as the bill proposed.

The issue of how to address billing existing tenants in properties that only have master water meters was removed from the bill for now but could be re-inserted into the bill if all of the parties come to agreement on the issue.

In another major development, SB 1386 (Lowenthal), was proposed. This bill would require carbon monoxide alarms to be installed in all residential structures on or before July 1, 2010 or upon application for a billing permit requested on or after July 1, 2009 if the value of the work covered by the permit exceeds $1,000.

SB 1386 moved one step closer to becoming a reality last week. We sought and achieved a number of amendments to the bill and have been promised by the author and sponsor of further amendments.

At one time the bill would have required us to test the units on a weekly basis-- an impossible mandate.

As amended, we are to demonstrate that the unit is operable at the time the resident takes possession. The resident will then be responsible for periodically testing the device and for notifying us if he or she becomes aware of an inoperable device within the unit.

Thus, landlords would not be held in violation of the (proposed) law for a deficient carbon monoxide device when the resident does not give notice of the deficiency.

We have been promised that if the State Fire Marshall decides to change the standards for the devices, we will not be required to install new devices unless we obtain a building permit for alternations, repairs or additions where the cost of those changes to the structure exceed $1000.

Senator Cedillo is authoring SB 1126. It is sponsored by the Los Angeles City Attorney, which addresses criminal street gang activity.

Every landlord in most urbanized areas would have been subject to the asset forfeiture laws should this bill moved forward. Current law authorizes any prosecuting attorney to seek and action for money damages for injuries caused by a street gang. In addition, only those assets derived from that criminal activity being abated could have been collected from the criminal street gang or its members to pay for the damages.

We expressed strong opposition to the measure when it would have allowed the prosecutor to collect any assets of property owners if the owners knew or should have known of the unlawful acts of a street gang.

Can you imagine loosing your property due to the illegal acts of a street gang if you should have known of that activity? What is this world coming to?