| Senate Bill 489 is sponsored by Senator Cathey. This bill provides for the duties of the Louisiana State Fire Marshal. This bill attempts to move licensing, plan review and inspection duties from the State Fire Marshal’s office to the 64 local jurisdictions in Louisiana. Kenny Klausman of Acadian Security Plus offers these talking points with our Senators Landry, Kirk, Migues, and Caussan. This Bill is: |
- Detrimental to the Life safety industry. Louisiana is the gold standard when it comes to licensing, plan review, and implementation of NFPA 72 codes.
- MS is example. They have no enforcement, so we see schools with disconnected fire and sprinkler systems, and other building such as motels under 60k sq ft with no fire protection.
- It would take a uniform procedure in fire design and planning from the SFM and put it hands of each parish where codes become subject to interpretation or lax.
- We would need to get licensed in each individual parish. Right now, we are centralized for employee licenses, and permit review. This would be a large administrative burden.
- Requirements for fire inspections and codes are left up to each parish which could result in how codes are interpreted and weakened life safety protocols.
- Would be costly to implement. Some Parishes are already poorly funded. It weakens the protection for Insurance companies and increases liabilities. They count on our industry and the SFM to effectively protect lives through NFPA during the construction process, and to make sure our systems help to mitigate any damage to life or structure.
- It seems as if the core of the Bill is to address the latency issues for builders and contractors to get final reviews. I think there are other options than to put this in the hands of each parish.