Senate Standing Committee on Housing

The Senate Committee on Housing will now convene. We are going to hear one Bill today, SB 552, by Senator Newman. He will be here momentarily. We are pursuant to new Senate procedures, all testimony will be live, in person. So let's establish a quorum.

[Roll call]

Okay, we have a quorum. Senator Newman, welcome.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Mr. Chair, Members, good afternoon. I appreciate the opportunity to present SB 552, which provides technical cleanup to the 2017 revision of the California Swimming Pool Act, a measure which I carried and which was signed into law by then Governor Jerry Brown. Before I begin, I'd like to thank the Chair and his staff for working with me on this Bill and commit to introducing amendments at the next opportunity that allow for manual pool covers to remain on the list of eligible pool safety devices. Further, after productive conversations with both the Committee staff and the opposition, who I understand are not able to be here today, but for whom, with whom we are working very hard to address their concerns, I would also like to commit to looking into the other points raised in the Committee's analysis.

These include considering the role of the building Standards Commission, verifying that the reference building standards, and identifying ways in which the state can better understand the efficacy of these antidrowning safety devices. According to the California Department of Public Health, drowning remains one of the leading causes of death for children aged 14 and younger in California, especially children one through four, with roughly 75% of all fatal childhood drownings occurring at home, schools, or in spas. To help better prevent such tragedies, the California Swimming Pool Safety act of 1996 required residential pools to be installed with at least one antidrowning safety device, such as a pool fence, a pool cover, or a backyard door exit alarm.

SB 442 of 2017 expanded and enhanced those protections by increasing the number of required safety features from one to two, as well as requiring home inspectors to document for new homebuyers which, if any, safety devices are installed or needed. Since implementation, however, the language of SB 442 has often been misinterpreted to suggest that home inspectors must conduct comprehensive safety tests that are far behind their capacity or the intended scope. Further, as drafted, the language of SB 442 inadvertently allowed for safety devices to be installed or combined in ways that do not create the redundancy the measures sought to ensure SB 552 addresses both of these outstanding issues. First, by clarifying the role of home inspectors, and second, by closing the two step safety device loophole, thereby ensuring that these life saving features are properly employed to most effectively prevent childhood deaths and injuries.

With me to testify today are Dave Pace, on behalf of the California Real Estate Inspection Association, and Steve Barrow, on behalf of the original sponsors of SB 442, the California Coalition for Children's Safety and Health. I am respectfully asking for your aye vote today.

Thank you very much. We'll now proceed with our witnesses.

And are we using the table or the-

Either way is fine. It's totally fine. Yeah. And it'll be 2 minutes per lead witness. Okay, you may proceed.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Steve Barrow. I'm the State Program Director for the California Coalition for Children's Safety and Health, and I was personally on the team that helped draft and write the Pool Safety Act back in 1996. We were also pleasantly the sponsors or co-sponsors of SB 442, that added the requirement of having two safety barriers. And we're really happy that the Senator keeps following up and helping to clarify some misinterpretations within that Bill and updating the definitions that are contained in our Pool Safety Act. Very important.

These might seem just only technical, but they will save lives of children. The misinterpretation of the two barriers, allowing some people to make a decision to put the same barrier on the same plane, the same door, defeats what the Legislature was doing in 2017 by adding a second layer. So we're supportive of the Bill. We hope that you'll support it. I'm here for more for technical questions.

Thank you very much.

My name is David Pace. I'm a recently retired real estate inspector after 30 years. I currently serve as Chairman of the legislative Committee of the California Real Estate Inspection Association, known as CREIA. We are pleased to co-sponsor this with Steve and his group. I want to thank Senator Newman for his hard work, his dedication to pool safety.

We believe that 552 provides needed clarification for the home inspectors who are charged with conducting pool safety feature inspections. We believe that providing better clarity for home inspectors as they conduct their inspections will, in turn, help us to communicate with better clarity to buyers of homes that have pools. We appreciate your consideration and ask for your support.

Great. Thank you very much. Is there any additional me-too support? Please state your name and your affiliation.

Chair, Members, John Norwood, on behalf of the California Pool and Spa Association and the Pool and Hot Tub Alliance. We're pleased to have worked with the Senator and both these gentlemen on the language to this Bill. We'll continue to work with them and ask for your aye vote. Thank you.

Great. Any additional supportive public comment? Seeing none, we'll move to opposition. Is there any opposition testimony today? Okay. Seeing none, we'll bring it back to the Committee. Any questions or comments? Motion by Senator Wahab. Okay, great. Senator Caballero.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. So I understand the current opposition continues to be the building officials, California building officials, and the commitment that you've made with them is to kind of work out the language so that it's clear exactly how it gets implemented, because I think this is really important.

I think either of these two, this is about the articulation of standards around industry standards.

Yeah. The building code officials want to make sure that they are the ones that do the original. When you build a pool or you remodel it, they just want to make sure that we are looking to them and how they work when they inspect the pool. The other thing that was suggested is that they should work with their commission to figure out which of these barriers work the best. The problem with that is they're not ASTM international, which has these big laboratories where they test the materials to make sure does this door alarm work? Does the pool cover work? There is SB 855 that you all passed a couple of years ago, was just recently funded to do a study of, pilot studies of how do you collect better information right at the incident site so that we'll know is there anything else we should be doing with this law to make it even stronger? So I think working with them will continue. We always look to them and work with them, but that's what they were doing. Their biggest thing was the manual. The Bill originally was drafted so that manual covers, which are covered under the F1346-91 ASTM standard, was removed. And now that has, the Senator has put that back in, working with the staff of the committees.

Okay. As long as you're working with them and can really differentiate who has the capacity and the ability to do the testing. And there's a backup, I guess, is the whole point of it, which is there's a backup system.

Right. If I could, the whole point of SB 442 from 2016 was to create redundancy. This bill is deliberately a cleanup bill, and it covers really two main areas. One is, to Mr. Barrow's point, that question of plane it doesn't make sense if two of those barriers were, at the same entry point, not useful. The other, probably more important issue here is about language that clarifies who's responsible for inspections, the scope of those inspections, so that we don't have people doing it different ways across the state. And this is important. Again, last year we did a bill to collect better data. There is nothing more tragic than a residential pool drowning precisely because it's so preventable. So the whole point of this regime is, to the extent absolutely possible to prevent these unnecessary tragedies from occurring.

Got it. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Great. Any other questions or comments, colleagues? Okay, we have a motion by Senator Wahab. There are no amendments today, but the author has agreed to continue to work with the Committee. And we appreciate that. And with that, we will call the roll. And I'm recommending an aye vote. You may close.

That was my close, but thank you for the consideration. Respectfully asking for an aye vote.

Thank you.

The motion is due pass and re-referred to the Committee on Appropriations. [Roll call] Six to zero.

Okay, the vote is six to zero. We will put that on call. Let's open it up for Senator Umberg. Thank you.

[Roll call]

Okay, that's 7-0. Okay, we have three members we're waiting for, so we'll keep that on call, and hopefully they'll be here shortly.

Okay, we're going to open the roll.

Senator Skinner.

It's on the Newman Bill. SB 552 is seven, nothing.

Skinner, aye.

With the Chair voting. Okay, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. We're all a little rusty after the recess. Eight, nothing. We'll put it back on call. Thank you.

All right, we are reopening the roll on the Housing Committee single bill that we voted on, and we now have our member, Senator Blakespear has returned. So the Bill is SB 552 Senator Newman. Staff, please call the roll.

The motion is due pass and re-refer the committee on Appropriations. Senator Blakespear.

Could you please tell me the results of the previous vote?

The current vote is eight to zero. Blakespear, aye.

All right, now with that SB 552 is. I'm sorry, who's still- Okay, and what's he indicated all right, so look, we don't need his vote. It can get up. So why don't you text him and see if we're going to close down the Committee? We're going to close down the Committee in three minutes, and if he's not here. Thanks, Catherine. Great. If you see him, tell him to get here. We're going to do three minutes, otherwise we're closing the roll.

Thank you, Senator Cortese. All right, the Housing Committee has come back to order, and we have our last remaining Member. Senator Cortese has returned. We're going to open the roll on SB 552. The vote so far is nine to zero, with the Chair voting yes. And staff, could you open the roll?

Senator Cortese.

This is completely up to you.

Cortese, aye.

All right. Thank you, Senator Cortese. SB 552 passes. It's out. And the vote was 10 to zero. And with that, the Housing Committee is adjourned.