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28 Hartford Business Journal • June 11, 2018 • www.HartfordBusiness.com Opinion & Commentary EDITOR'S TAKE Mandatory water sprinklers in new homes misguided policy T here's been a fiery debate going on at the state legislature in recent years that has received little attention, up until recently, but could have a wide-ranging impact on the affordability of new homes and the safety of firefighters and homeowners. For years, a coalition of fire marshals, fire chiefs, building officials and sprin- kler contractors has been lobbying state lawmakers to require certain newly built residential structures to have indoor sprinkler systems, arguing it would save lives and property in case of a fire. They've been vehemently opposed by the state's homebuilding industry, which argues the pricetag to add sprinklers in new homes — they estimate between $10,000 to $20,000 — would increase Connecticut's already high housing costs with little benefit. This is a sensitive issue because no one wants to oppose measures that fire officials say could potentially keep residents and firefighters safer, but the sprinklers push is misguided and lawmakers should continue to reject such overtures. The added costs will simply be passed on to homebuyers, exacerbating the already high cost of living in this state, which has been suffering from economic decline and slowly losing population in recent years. The decision to add household sprinkler systems should be left to the home- owner, not dictated by state government. This debate has taken on several forms over the years and both sides have ac- cused each other of making false or misleading claims. In 2015, the Connecticut Fire Sprinkler Coalition unsuccessfully pushed for sprin- klers to be included in newly built one- and two-family homes. A year later, they lob- bied for municipalities' rights to adopt pro-sprinkler ordinances, but that too was shot down because it would have undone a statewide mandatory building code. This year, sprinkler advocates tried to get their way outside the traditional leg- islative process. In April, the state's Codes and Standards Committee, responsible for setting building, electrical, mechanical, plumbing and energy code require- ments for all residential and commercial structures, voted 11-1, with two absten- tions, to require new townhomes be equipped with overhead water sprinklers. The legislature's Regulatory Review Committee, however, recently rejected the code change arguing it went beyond their statutory authority and should be decided by the state legislature instead. Both sides of this debate have clashed on several key arguments, including the cost of installing sprinkler systems. Homebuilders say the per-unit tab ranges from $10,000 to $20,000, depending on dwelling size. Fire marshals and others say those numbers are exaggerated and that the upfront cost provides a positive return on investment, and often results in lower insurance costs. Sprinkler advocates also say newer homes are more likely to include light- weight, man-made materials that are more prone to collapse during a fire. Homebuilders say it's older homes that pose the biggest fire risks and that most fire deaths occur in dwellings erected before 1985. Finally, fire officials have said sprinklers decrease the risk of dying in a fire by 82 percent. Builders say hardwired smoke detectors offer adequate protections. There are other talking points but you get the picture by now. Both sides are pas- sionate about this issue and are using data that support their arguments. But the sprinkler proposals are a solution in search of a problem. I haven't seen evidence of an epidemic of fires in newly built homes, so the costs seem to outweigh the benefits. The best fire prevention is homeowners taking personal responsibility to maintain working smoke detectors and extinguishers, and avoiding dangerous situations that could lead to fires in the first place. Greg Bordonaro Editor RULE OF LAW Union doesn't deserve credit for caregivers' pay hike By John Horak I n a typical labor dispute, the tug of war over wages is between management and the union, with the union using its ability to strike to wrest higher wages from management. Accordingly, if you read the ac- counts of the recently averted strike at state nonprofit organizations caring for the intellectually disabled (see "Senate approves raises to avert group home strikes," in the May 7 edition of the Hartford Business Journal), you might think the union (SEIU 1199) deserves a victory lap. As the May 7 story puts it, the strike was averted when the legislature agreed to allocate funds sufficient to give the non- profit workers their first raise in over 10 years (minimum wages of $11.20 per hour will rise to $ 14.75 in 2019). However, if you scratch below the surface of the story a different picture emerges. This long overdue and too modest wage increase isn't the result of the cho- reographed pas de deux between the union's strike threat and the legisla- ture's acquiescence, but the conse- quence of nonprofit management (and the families of the disabled) tire- lessly advocating for higher wages for their employees for years. In fact, the union with a compliant legislature tacitly enabled the 10-year nonprofit wage drought (for reasons explained below) in a bizarre role reversal of the labor-management paradigm — an example of what the April 25 Wall Street Journal referred to as our progressive "experiment in public-union governance." The backstory is as follows: Con- necticut has an unusual system for the care of the intellectually disabled. There is a class of dues-paying union members employed by the Depart- ment of Developmental Services (DDS) who are paid at state wage rates, and a second class of dues- paying union members who work at the nonprofits at considerably lower rates (about 40 percent lower by my estimate after the increase). This anomaly exists because the nonprofits are effectively 100 percent funded by the DDS, so there is only one paymaster (the state), one union (SEIU), but two classes of employees — and the nonprofits are able to pay their employees only what the DDS allots to them. In a common-sense world the people hired to do this work with state funds would be paid the same amount, but this has not happened because money is tight and the union, favoring members working at the DDS, has not only refused to make concessions, but has actually brought litigation to stop DDS from shifting more work to the nonprofits to save money and set the stage for wage equalization between the two classes of unionized employees. The nonprofit employees also suffer the indignity of paying union dues at the same rates as their higher-paid counterparts at the DDS. According to reports on file with the state Comptroller, the mini- mum biweekly rate is $11.54, and the maximum is $36.46. The dues paid by the nonprofit employees basically subsidize union efforts to protect the wages and benefits of the union members employed by the DDS. In its national charter, the SEIU de- scribes itself as a "leading advocacy or- ganization for working people with the responsibility to pursue justice for all," with a goal of a "more equal world for generations to come." The union owes the nonprofit employees an apology for violating its charter and to affirm their dignity as working people. Readers may not realize that labor unions are essentially nonprofit tax-ex- empt organizations, with separate fed- eral and state statutory exemptions. Given the union's inability to live up to the promises in its charter, the legisla- ture could help it do so by imposing an income tax on the union's Connecticut dues revenue. The tax revenue could be allocated to the nonprofits to bring their wages to where they should be, if not to fund the state's unfunded pen- sion liabilities. John M. Horak is the director of TANGO Nonprofit Education and Consulting. John Horak