Just as a matter of clarification. Contractors are already required to be licensed in Washington. This new bill adds a test to the requirement. Previously, all you had to do to be a contractor was provide the state with financial responsibility documents and pay the $45.00 fee. No knowledge of construction was required.
I beleive the two worst provisions in this bill are the “mentoring requirements” and the “two realtors on the board”. The board of real estate does not have home inspectors on the board, why should the board of home inspectors have realtors on the board? The answer is probably that the Washington realtors association is a very powerful lobby.
“Committee’s proposal, of which we still have seen very little”
There is a thread in here, a couple weeks back, where I posted the entire committee proposal. You should be able to find that. Most of the proposal is not in the legislation, however a few modifications were made to the bill based on that, far as I can tell.
It is proven that it takes less effort and inside clout to kill a bill, totally, than it does to get the wording of someone else’s bill changed to reflect your own desires or agenda.
Washington inspectors who oppose this bill should work to kill it. Let it’s authors come to you with offers of compromise if they want it to stay alive.
Wendy,
Senator Spanel was very clear that she feels home inspectors should continue to do WDO inspections.
Since you could not legally perform a home inspection in Washington state without doing a complete WDO inspection and comply with any of the associations standards of practice. I think it would make a lot of sense to look at ICN’s to determine the number of inspections performed.
Lewis Capaul implied that I lied when I said that the committee and I were not involved in proposing either last year’s or this year’s legislation.
He obviously doesn’t know anything about the history of SB 6229 and the forming of the coalition.
The coalition was formed in opposition to legislature, based on the South Dakota law, that was circulated by me. Shortly after that happened, Senate Bill 6229 was introduced at the request of Dave Waterman, a Bellingham inspector. When the coalition read 6229 they un-invited waterman and invited me to participate in their group.
As I said in the past, if you don’t like things about the new bill contact your local legislator.
If you are not registered to vote in the state of Washington you might as well sit back and watch what happens because you won’t find many legislators who will care what you think.
Thanks Gerry. Good clarification and right to the point.
Oh, I agree. But since there is no language in the bill stating what composes a home inspection, most likely due to issues brought up earlier in this thread such as people coming in from out of state who don’t do WDO’s, it doesn’t seem likely that they will use ICN’s as part of the criteria for grandfathering. Indeed I would posit that if it isn’t in the language then it wouldn’t be legally binding. That would be something easily challenged in a courtroom, and whether many inspectors like it or not, the courtroom is where much of this is decided.
Very good point.
Where’s the SOP, the COE, the only thing posted was the “Bullet Points” of the Advisory Board’s recommendations, not the complete proposal.
Isn’t that true Gerry? I didn’t say you contacted or pushed for this version of the Bill, but who is the President of the Seattle Chapter of ASHI, and isn’t he a member of the Advisory Committee? Wasn’t he the same guy mentioned in the KIRO Article when Kohl-Wells said that she was going to bring up legislation to Regulate Home Inspectors? And wasn’t it you who came up with a Home Inspector Regulation Bill that you presented to Rep. Erickson which later lead to Waterman coming up with and pushing SB6229 with Spanel?
You’re telling us that no one from the Advisory Board has discussed the Board’s proposals with Spanel, Kohl-Wells, or Brandland? That’s not what I’ve been told.
By the way, the Senators don’t face reelection until after this Bill is scheduled to take effect, and my Washington Business Address is in Cheney, they don’t know where Emails and Letters come from, Nick contacted them last year, and he doesn’t even inspect in Washington, millions of dollars of out of State money make it into the Campaigns of Washington Legislators, what the three Senators involved don’t really care about is any Home Inspector not from their District, and I still find it a little suspicious that the Politicians pushing for Regulation Represent the same Districts where certain Inspectors have pushed for regulation in the past, regulation that heavily favored their finances.
I do agree that WSDA ICN’s would be the most effective way of proving that someone has done the required number of inspections in Washington State, anyone coming from a State where WDO Inspections are not required would have to provide other proof, like providing a list of inspections performed and then providing 25 randomly selected reports to the qualifying Board,and then take whatever test it takes to get their SPI License. Washington Inspectors without a valid SPI could not do the same thing, as practically every Inspection would have required a WDO inspection and ICN, all they would have is a 100 Inspections performed in violation of Existing State Law.
I didn’t say that the Board proposed this Bill, but do you deny that certain members of the Board have been in contact with the Senators involved for at least the past few months, and that none of those who “may” have been are in favor of Regulation, or that they never brought up similiar proposals during Board meetings? We’re supposed to believe that three Senators came up with SB5788 all on their own and that no member of your Board either on their own or by proxy had anything to do with the wording of 5788? Who was the “Advisory Board” supposed to be “Advising”?
James, I don’t think anyone really believes this Bill was written by the Senators alone, but no body seems to want to take credit. the “exagerated” News coverage, as I’ve said before, isn’t really about the Home Inspection, the Inspector admitted he was at fault, he has E&O, but he also limited his liability in his contract to the cost of the Inspection, the Issue in the KIRO Report is about Limitations of Liability, someone jerked the Politician’s chains and got them all excited about Home Inspection Regulation instead of the Liability matter. Someone in the Seattle/Bellingham area wanted legislation passed, the KIRO Report, which reproted an incident from 3 or 4 years ago gave them the ammo.
I can live with this Bill, I don’t like the Realtors on the Board and I don’t like the “Mentoring”, but I already carry E&O and have an SPI License, at least this way I’ll be answerable to a Board of Home Inspectors instead of a couple of guys with PHD’s in Bug’s.
It’s called PARITY I believe, and you can’t require one thing of one applicant, and another thing of another applicant. There has to be a level playing field.
Parity
**From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia**
[(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary), the free dictionary.
Parity is a concept of equality of status or functional equivalence.](“File:Wiktionary-logo-en.png - Wikipedia”)
It is not a violation of existing state law. What it is, is a violation of the Department of Agricultures interpretation of the WDO requirements for Structural Pest Inspectors.
As it currently stands, there are no laws on the books pertaining to Home Inspectors. Only Structural Pest Inspectors. While all agree that Home Inspectors naturally need to perform the function of reporting on pests and conducive conditions, nothing has so far successfully tied the two together.
This is what Senator Spanel hopes to do in her bill. Please carefully read the language of the bill itself. There is nothing whatsoever addressing past home inspections and whether or not they included ICN’s or not. If the bill successfully is placed into law, we can see that unless changes are made beforehand, there will be no rule of law in place that will succeed in making home inspectors accountable for what has happened in the past. That would involve much time, effort, and expense that could be spent more efficiently in addressing the issue in the future, which is what her bill obviously attempts to do.
What’s in the past Lewis is in the past, and you may simply just have to let this one go and move forward. By December of this year, if the bill succeeds, both the Dept. of Ag. and the new HI Board will need to have found a way to address this issue. It will be enough work to deal with what is happening from that point on, and nobody I think will want to revisit the past and attempt to regulate something that has already been determined to be obsolete.
If you have a response to this, please make sure that it is far more well thought out and articulate than to simply insult me and attempt to discredit me by name calling. Anything less will be discarded with the trash where it belongs.
“Where’s the SOP, the COE, the only thing posted was the “Bullet Points” of the Advisory Board’s recommendations, not the complete proposal.”
To the best of my knowledge, that is all the industry committee put out. I think they were focusing on the things they were most wanting to influence. Maybe Gerry D knows more, but that was the public statement and I never saw anything more. If they did more, it is not being widely circulated, although it seems moot now in that work is going to be done off the proposed bill, most of the industry committee suggestions were not incorporated into it or were modified greatly. I am sure there will be many changes to that bill as well, should it make its way through the process this time.
From SB 5788
“On July 1, 2008, any person who has been actively engaged in
the business of conducting home inspections for at least two years and
who has conducted at least one hundred home inspections may apply to
the board for initial licensure without meeting the examination or
instruction requirements of this chapter.”
Just seems odd that they would use two years in business and only 100 inspections. That is the equivalent of an individual inspecting one house every Saturday for two years. Hardly even a part time employment.
(Oh but the inspector does get two Saturdays off per year) 
Many say licensing lowers the bar…what bar?
Absolutely true, that is one of the things that has burned me about the proposed legislation for HI’s…as a contractor you can construct a home, that the end buyer is going to pay hundreds of thousands in dollars for, yet to get your license, you do not need to show any proficiency.
And while there are good honest contractors out there building a decent product, there are alot of outfits just slapping things together. I would have to say I have seen way more consumers “harmed” by construction defects than those “harmed” from a home inspection gone wrong.
They are working on legislation to also extend construction warranties to a 2-5-10 for additional consumer protection. The Master Builders Association is not happy.
Someone does not want to lose NAHI support for this bill.
What makes you think that more changes will be made to this bill? I believe by the time it makes it to this point, most all of the changes have been made to it, and considering that they had a learning curve to work off of, al l they had to do was to make sure they incorporated the things required and deleted the things asked to be removed from the last time and they should end up with a working bill.
I actually am more and more impressed as I read it over and over. It takes away the ability of any of these small interest groups (you know who you are) from being able to push their agenda on the rest of the HI community. Overall I’m pretty happy with it and wouldn’t be overly unhappy if it passed in a fairly intact form.
At the last meeting of the Advisory Board they voted to make the “Provisional” SOP and COE available to the public, that was several weeks ago, but that’s pretty much irrelevant now isn’t it.
And Wendy, technically you may be right, no law specifically mentions Home Inspector regulation, but you cannot conduct a Home Inspection in Washington State without an SPI License and be in compliance with any HI Association’s SOP, so once again, what are you doing as a Member of an Association that requires compliance with its SOP and COE? We all know of your vast leagal expertise, but don’t you really think that someone within the past 16 years that the SPI requirement has been in effect would have challenged WSDA’s Interpretation of the Law in Court, according to you it would be so easy to overturn their “opinions”.
You can keep repeating your story about how YOU don’t need an SPi License to be a Home Inspector in WA, maybe if you repeat it for another year or so you’ll finally come to truly believe it, you’re not convincing anyone else.
Wasn’t your argument when the Advisory Board’s bullet points were listed that the 250 required inspections would have to be done in accordance with the “NEW” law, which according to the Board would have no SPI Requirement? Read 5788 a little closer and tell me how that would hold true for you now.
The DOL only cares if you have a Drivers License and that the vehicle you are driving is properly licensed, they don’t give a damn how fast you drive or how many stop signs you run, other agencies enforce those laws, just like the WSDA enforces, or at least has the power to enforce, SPI/WDO Inspections…that pretty much ties Home Inspection and WDO’s together legally.
A level playing field would be 100 Legal Inspections performed to Industry Standards and the Laws of the State in which they were conducted, anyone becoming an Inspector in Washington would have to take and pass the SPI Exam and obtain the required insurance, someone claiming 100 Inspections done to NO Association Standard or 100 Inspections done in Violation of State Law and Association COE’s would not constitute “Parity”, you must be counting on using your Draw Inspections as experience, those are the only ones you can legally do and not Violate NACHJI’s SOP/COE…I doubt very much that will fly Wendy.