Lobbyists Set L.A. Sprinkler Law Tottering

Business lobbyists worked long, hard and successfully during the closing hours of the legislative session for a bill that would preempt Los Angeles’ tough new high-rise sprinkler ordinance.

Lobbyists for the Building Owners and Managers Assn. and the California Hotel-Motel Assn. turned their sights on Sacramento after it became clear that city officials would not back down on a strict timetable for installing the fire-suppression systems, representatives of the trade associations said. The goal, they said, was for the state to assume jurisdiction, preventing enforcement of the Los Angeles ordinance.

In the end, legislators--including most of the Los Angeles-area delegation--voted overwhelmingly for the state measure rather than see no state regulation passed requiring fire sprinklers, according to those close to the negotiations.

Now city officials are asking Gov. George Deukmejian to veto the bill, charging that it could cost lives and millions of dollars in property damage by extending the amount of time building owners have to install sprinkler systems. The governor’s office said he had not yet made a decision on the bill.

‘Ability to Save Lives’

“You wonder how many people have to die before we really take something like this seriously,” Los Angeles Fire Chief Donald O. Manning told a City Hall press conference Thursday. “We have in our grasp the ability to save lives and property right now.”

The state bill would grant building owners up to nine years to install fire sprinklers. The city ordinance sets a four-year maximum deadline.

The state bill was authored by Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) after the First Interstate Bank building blaze that took one life and left 40 workers injured. The fire May 4, in the midst of the greatest concentration of high-rise buildings in Los Angeles, was in Torres’ district, and he said it was time to deal with the issue of fire safety in older high-rise buildings.

City officials were moving down a parallel track and in July passed a bill requiring all existing commercial buildings more than 75 feet in height to install sprinkler systems.

Torres’ nearly identical bill was swept through the Senate and sent to the Assembly where it quickly cleared one committee. But then it became the target of proposed amendments seeking a laundry list of tax credits, building code changes and extended timetables for completing installation work.

The most controversial proposals by the business lobbyists asked that the tight Los Angeles city ordinance be preempted by the state, with a more relaxed state enforcement schedule becoming the law throughout California.

The Building Owners and Managers Assn. and the California Hotel-Motel Assn. drew the line on the preemption issue.

“They were effective in communicating that the bill would be killed unless they got (the city ordinance) preempted,” Manning said in an interview. His view was echoed by other supporters of the bill who observed the negotiations in the Assembly.

“Without preemption, we would have opposed this bill,” said Jim Abrams, legal counsel to the California Hotel-Motel Assn. Some Sacramento lobbyists said the hotel-motel association and the building owners group have the clout to have killed the bill.

Torres, in an interview, said the bill would never have cleared the Assembly without the preemption clauses.

Legislators, including Torres and Assemblyman Mike Roos, (D-Los Angeles), who carried the bill in the Assembly, felt that the need for sprinklers in hundreds of aging high-rises statewide was too important to let the bill die.

And many of the Los Angeles area legislators who supported the state bill said it is actually stronger than the city law because it required sprinklers in residential building as well as commercial structures. The city ordinance only applies to commercial buildings.

“I represent the the largest group of senior citizens in California who are bunched in buildings over 75 feet tall and have no sprinklers,” Roos said. If the city had dealt effectively with the residential issue, Roos said he might have opposed the state bill.

The state legislation was also supported by most of state’s firefighter organizations, including the California Fireman’s Assn. Firefighters say the bill sets a good standard for the state.

And backers of the bill said local control would be maintained because only local authorities could grant extensions.

The bill says that the time to install “shall be extended for a period of up to three years upon approval of the local fire enforcement agency with a showing of reasonable effort to comply and a showing of good cause.”

Los Angeles Fire Marshal Craig Drummond said it would be impossible to deny an extension to a building owner, given the language and legislative history of the bill.

“The city worries that the extensions are automatic,” Torres said. “My worry is that they believe it, because that means they won’t be very tough.”

Jeff Ely, a lobbyist with the Building Owners and Managers Assn., said the language is intended not to grant an automatic extension, but to ensure “that they have a good reason to deny.”