Don't watch sausage being made

H.L. Mencken once said “For every complex problem there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.”  Stephen Leacock once described the actions of a character who “flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.”  Both of these quotations were in full display in the California legislature this week.

In the wee hours of June 16^th an apartment balcony in Berkeley, California collapsed, killing six people and injuring seven.  Less than a month later the legislator in whose district the tragedy occurred declared that she knew exactly what happened, who was at fault, and had devised hastily written legislation to make sure that such an accident would never, ever happen again.  Maybe someday the California legislature will figure out how to outlaw rainy days during picnics; oh wait, given the drought, maybe they have.

The bill in question, SB 465, is what is called a “gut and amend” meaning that a bill is significantly along the legislative process when its contents are taken out and replaced by something completely different; it is a way legislators have of circumventing the annoying legislative process. The contents of SB 465 were gutted and replaced with a proposal to require general contractors to, among other things, report to the Contractors State License Board any settlement they make concerning a dispute that is for more than $50,000.

If I was truly cynical I would claim that the bill authors, Senators Jerry Hill and Loni Hancock, were taking advantage of a tragedy to pander for votes.  But I won’t.  I suspect both authors are moved by the tragedy and sincerely believe in their proposal.  The problem is they are both utterly incapable of thinking logically.

At the hearing on the bill the industry associations representing contractors pointed out a plethora of problems with the proposal.  There is no evidence at this time that the collapse was due to general contractor negligence.  Settlements by general contractors do not imply fault and are a cost of doing business, and in fact this bill would encourage lawyers to threaten lawsuits or offer settlements just below the $50,000 threshold.  A $50,000 settlement, while possibly significant in regards to a $300,000 home, would be de minimus on a multi-million dollar construction project. 

If I heard correctly on my audio feed, I believe Senator Hill said that he agreed with all of the objections except that he still urged an Aye vote.  I expected him to stand up and shout, “For God’s sake, we have to do something NOW!!!”  When some members of the committee suggested holding the bill over until next year, Senators Hill and Hancock stressed the urgency of doing something immediately or other people would die.

So apparently the goal of the California legislature is to abolish death (unless you are actually dying, then they want to help it along.). 

When someone else pointed out that we really did not yet know what the cause of the balcony collapse was, Senator Hill replied with certitude that we did know, as if the writings of the San Francisco Chronicle had acquired the verity of the Word of God.

It is not known what caused the balcony collapse; it could have been poor design, negligent maintenance, misconduct by a prior tenant, inadequate building inspection, or excessive weight being applied (preliminary analysis indicated wood supports were degraded by dry rot, but the reason for the dry rot is not evident).  It is not known whether requiring contractors to report settlements to the CSLB would prevent such occurrences, partly because we don’t know that the contractor is at fault, partly because shutting down every contractor who settled a claim would cripple the building industry. 

So, we don’t know the problem, and we don’t know if this solution would fix the problem we assume we have, but according to the authors the bill has to be passed immediately.  Fortunately people with saner heads than Senators Hill and Hancock prevailed and the bill did not get out of committee.

Of course Senator Hancock declared this exhibition of sanity to be a sign that the legislature was ineffective and this would “shake people’s confidence in government.”  Frankly, I’m encouraged any time the forces of logic and reason can prevail over the forces or irrationality and nonsense.

There are systems in place to deal with incidents like this.  Buildings are required to be inspected; contractors are held liable if they are proven to be negligent; firms that do poor work go out of business. No system is perfect, and tragedies still happen.  Not every tragedy requires new laws.

In April of 2007 a truck carrying gasoline crashed in Oakland, injuring the driver but otherwise just causing damage to the freeway overpass.  Once it came out that the driver had a criminal record, someone introduced a bill prohibiting ex-cons from driving fuel trucks, even though there was no connection between the crash and the driver’s status as an ex-con (it was pointed out that truck driving is one of the few jobs ex-cons can assimilate into easily).  Like H. L. Mencken said: an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.