Depending on your point of view, a proposed law brought
before the California legislature in April is either a
common-sense effort to inform consumers about the services
provided by interior designers or a covert attempt to use the
state's legal system to push contractors, remodelers, and other
established providers of home-design services out of the
marketplace.
The dispute centers on whether SB 1312 is a title bill
— legislation intended to restrict the use of the term
"registered interior designer" to those who have fulfilled the
training program established by the private National Council
for Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ) — or a
practice bill, which would limit the practice of interior
design to those who have met that standard. As a rule, practice
laws are enacted to protect public health, safety, and welfare,
as in the establishment of standards regulating doctors,
dentists, lawyers, funeral directors, and even tattoo
artists.
According to NCIDQ executive director Jeff Kenney, SB 1312 is
purely a title bill. "It doesn't affect contracting law," he
says. "Builders can go on doing whatever they've been doing as
long as they don't call themselves registered interior
designers."
But Ed Nagorsky, a lawyer with the National Kitchen &
Bath Association (NKBA) — which strongly opposes the
bill — has a different view. "Read the bill," he says.
"It's a practice act. It's amazing to me that anyone can say
otherwise with a straight face."
In fact, the plain language of SB 1312 leaves little doubt
that it could sharply limit the ability of traditional builders
and remodelers to perform design work, regardless of what they
call themselves.
Article 1 of the bill, for example, broadly defines
"registered interior design or practice of registered interior
design" as the "formulation of appropriate, functional, and
safe preliminary designs, including space planning, for the
interior area." Article 5 declares it unlawful for a person to
"practice registered interior design, or use the title
‘registered interior designer,' in this state unless
he or she holds a certificate of registration issued by the
board pursuant to this chapter." Chapter 5 proposes a $500 fine
and six months in jail for a first offense of improperly
practicing registered interior design. Fines and jail time
would be doubled upon a second offense.
Pressed to explain how that language could fail to apply to
builders currently doing design work, NCIDQ's Kenney points to
a list of exemptions in Article 1, which permits those who are
not registered interior designers to "prepare drawings of the
layout of, or provide assistance in the selection of" about a
dozen products and materials, including decorative accessories,
draperies, blinds, window coverings, furniture, and equipment.
"The way interior design is defined includes the exemptions,"
he says.
Nagorsky scoffs at that explanation. "If you really want to
exempt people, you don't talk about materials," he says. "You
include language that says ‘anyone providing design
services for one- and two-family homes is exempt,' or something
like that." The real problem with SB 1312, he claims, is that
it's an effort to use state law as a heavy-handed marketing
tool. "The NKBA spends a million dollars a year marketing its
services to the public," he says. "The interior designers spend
millions on lobbying." — Jon Vara
Offcuts
•••An
uptick in residential arson may be linked to the mortgage
crisis, say news sources. A Fortune story, for example, notes
that questionable residential fires in California increased by
76 percent from 2006 to 2007. MSN Money reports that in
Detroit, home prices are down 17.3 percent, foreclosures are up
65 percent, and arson arrest warrants nearly doubled from 2005
to 2007. "We're up to our eyeballs in arsons," a Detroit Fire
Department spokesman said. "We're not only dealing with
hardened criminals. We're dealing with desperate people."
•••In a scene reminiscent of an old
Tom and Jerry cartoon, workers from K. Hovnanian Homes spent
several days in March cutting holes in the drywall of a
brand-new Gilbert, Ariz., home while searching for a trapped
cat. According to KNXV-TV in Phoenix, the animal was finally
rescued through a hole upstairs, but not until all the
downstairs drywall had been cut away. Whether the cat had been
built into the home during construction or had entered later
wasn't clear. No word, either, on who'll end up paying the
bill.
•••Western lumber production in 2008
will be the lowest since 1982, predicts the Western Wood
Products Association. Lumber imports, principally from Canada,
fell by 20 percent in 2007 and are expected to decline an
additional 17 percent this year. But the WWPA looks forward to
modest gains in 2009, with increased housing starts pushing
production upward by 6 percent.
•••A raid on a
Northern Virginia concrete contractor by federal immigration
authorities has led to the arrests of 34 undocumented workers
from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica,
the Washington Post reports. The March 24 arrests came three
weeks after the enactment of a Prince William County law that
allows police to check the immigration status of people stopped
for nonimmigration-related infractions. According to early
press reports, the arrested workers were being processed for
deportation, but no charges had been filed against their
employer, Manassas-based CMC Concrete Construction.
Fatal Fall Leads to Criminal
Obstruction Charge
In October 2007, roofer Walter "Boe" Whipple died after
falling 16 feet through a skylight on a Rock Island, Ill.,
commercial job site. Five years earlier, his employer, Winter's
Architectural Roofing — a residential and commercial
roofing and siding contractor based in nearby Carbon Cliff,
Ill. — had been cited by OSHA for failing to provide
fall protection to workers. That previous citation apparently
prompted the astonishing series of actions taken by company
superintendent Stephen V. Vyncke after Whipple's death. OSHA
compliance officer Jeff Strain described those actions in a
sworn affidavit filed with the U.S. District Court for the
Central District of Illinois. An excerpt from his deposition
follows:
On October 10, 2007, shortly after learning that Walter
Whipple had died [Whipple had been pronounced dead at the scene
at 8:39 a.m.], Mr. Vyncke loaded fall-protection equipment,
including warning lines, into a truck and drove to the site. He
placed the fall-protection equipment between two dumpsters.
After Mr. Whipple's body was removed but before OSHA arrived
[at approximately 1 p.m.], Mr. Vyncke climbed
to the roof and, with two other Winter's employees, erected
warning lines along the edge of the roof. On or about October
10, 2007, Mr. Vyncke instructed another Winter's employee who
had worked at the site that day not to mention that warning
lines were not present at the time of the accident and if asked
about the warning lines to state that the warning lines were up
the day of the accident.
Because the case is still in court, none of the people
directly involved in the case had anything to say on the
record. But Sharon Paul, spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's
Office for the Central District of Illinois, confirmed that
Vyncke has been charged with one count of making false
statements to an OSHA compliance officer and three counts of
obstructing an OSHA investigation. If convicted on all four
counts, Vyncke could face up to 20 years in prison.
So far no criminal charges have been filed against Winter's
Architectural Roofing. However, OSHA has cited the 70-year-old
company for eight safety and health violations in connection
with the accident, which carry a proposed fine of $224,000.
— J.V.