The Making of a Home Inspection Licensing Law

[hausdok]

By Sandy Hartman, WHILAG Liaison

Last Friday was a culmination of sorts, of a fairly long process – the making of a home inspector licensing law. Some home inspectors will view this as a positive development; others will view it as a catastrophe. For me, it was a learning process, and a lesson in cooperation.

WHILAG and interested parties at the bill signingPhoto by Don Hartman

In January of 2006, I was invited by Mike O’Handley to attend a meeting in downtown Seattle. O'Handley, as Editor of The Inspector's Journal and an independent, had been asked by a group of home inspectors, who were concerned about rumors that some poor legislation was about to be proposed, to organize a summit between various home inspection entities in Washington State. The main purpose of the summit was to explore whether it would be possible to form a coalition to address the issue of home inspection legislation.

Representatives of the following associations/groups were invited and attended that meeting: AII, ASHI, NAHI, NACHI, WSPCA/WSHIA, Franchises, Independent Home Inspectors, and Engineers. Reviewing the roster of that meeting, I found that twenty-three people were present at that first gathering. I say first gathering, because I define that meeting as the actual formation of the coalition – later to be named the Washington Home Inspectors Legislative Advisory Group (WHILAG). However, other meetings had taken place prior to this one, with the intention of gathering associations and others together in a common interest and to identify common goals.

This is probably a good time to make this point clear: Neither at the first meeting, nor at any time thereafter, was the coalition driven by any one association or group. There has been a preoccupation by some in our profession to look for subterfuge within the group. It was never an ASHI group in sheep’s clothing, never excluded any national home inspector association, and never promoted the agenda of a particular association. Mike O’Handley, the independent who rallied us all together, is suspicious of all associations equally! He made it clear from the start that there would be no 800-pound gorillas in the room. He is an advocate for the independent inspectors, and was adamant that no one entity or special interest would control the group.

Our first year as a coalition was spent, in part, fighting SB 6229. We supported very little of anything in that bill. It was obviously influenced by technical training staff, rather than home inspectors. We were not very successful that year in convincing Senator Spanel that we were a good resource for her. We thought it was fairly obvious; here we were a group with representation from associations, franchises, and independents. The “youngstersâ€

[RickSab]

Even though I will never work in the state, I applaud your efforts and hope it will open eyes. No matter your affiliation, most of us are small business trying to do the right thing. Lets hope we can all put association agendas to the side when we have the opportunity to promote the profession and serve our clients.

Rick Sabatino

[randynavarro]

I squeezed a few minutes to read the piece.

A hearty cheer and thumbs up to WHILAG and our own Mike O.

BTW, I, too, would really love to hear the walls speak in that Shoreline Conference Center. I'm a bit of a sucker for gossip. Who's a jerk? Who didn't want to play the game and stormed out of the group like a baby 'cuz they didn't get what they wanted? You know, that sort of stuff.

[hausdok]

Hi Randy,

Didn't I sort of cover that in a long tome a few weeks back? It didn't go into all of the details but it kind of covered what went on. I thought that was here but maybe not.

It might have been on another board. For several years, I hardly ventured away from TIJ or my forum at JLC but lately I've been slamming around the net outside of TIJ like a pebble in the bottom of a tin can, sticking my nose in where it's not wanted and generally pretty much making an ass of myself.

I need to stop looking at forums outside of TIJ; the soap operas are just too damned depressing. Probably the best thing for me to do would be to never visit another forum so I can stay out of trouble.

If you can't find that post, and you really have a hankering to know, give me a call and invite me over to the Starbucks by the alley or over to 3rd place books for a coffee and I'll fill you in on all of the sordid little details that really shouldn't be discussed here openly. Really, there were times when some of us just wanted to get up and smack others in the group. I've got about a thousand emails archived and I can tell you that some of them, particularly my own, went beyond being rude; I honestly don't know how we managed to bring 13 of us almost all the way to the end and ended up with 11. Richard Moore can tell you, he was there for some of it.

Now the real crap is gonna start; the political jockeying for seats on the board has already begun and I know of two bug-centric guys who are probably going to try and slip onto the board by trying to get the one inspector educator slot that's available. You can bet, with as many bug-centric inspectors in this state that didn't want things to change and who are buddies with Dr. Dan, that there will be plenty more trying for the other slots. The bug guys have held sway over HI's here for so long that I doubt that they're going to give up now. It's going to be a free-for-all and the damned rules haven't even been published by DOL yet.

Once that board is seated, the amount of work that they've got to do to make the deadline is astronomical; I wonder if they'll even be able to make it in time for the kickoff for experienced inspectors on July 1, 2009?

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[msteger]

Now, if we could just get the bills currently sitting in the PA Senate and PA House out of committee and up to a vote.