An amendment to the supplemental budget that’s up for debate in the House tomorrow would broaden a 10-year old law that allows landlords to bill tenants for their water usage under some circumstances.
The current law lets landlords who have installed water-conserving fixtures in their rental units and have also installed water submeters that accurately measure water usage to the tenants’ apartments to charge tenants for water once they have certified to the local board of health (under the penalties of perjury) that they have complied with these two requirements.
The amendment, filed by Representative Angelo Puppolo (D-Wilbraham), would appear to apply to situations in which the rental property has been sold to new owners since the time that the former owners certified that they were in compliance with the law’s requirements but the certification cannot be located despite good faith efforts by the new owners.
One might think that an appropriate solution in these cases (which should be few in number since the local boards of health have records of the certifications) would be for the new owners to provide proof that their properties are equipped with water-conserving fixtures and water submeters.
But instead, the new owners need only file a new “form” to the effect that their rental units are in compliance with the law. The form, which need not even be submitted under the penalties of perjury, concerns almost by definition a topic about which the new owners are confessing their lack of direct knowledge — they weren’t involved.
The House tried to get the Senate to agree to this change during the conference committee negotiations on the main budget in June, but the Senate said no. If the change goes through this time, expect that suddenly lots of tenants will be obligated for water charges on top of their rent.
(Cross-posted here).
This is is utterly bizarre. I have a hard time believing even Mr. DeLeo would stoop this low.
This sounds like a way to allow sleazy landlords to do nothing about metering or conservation, evict current tenants, then file a fraudulent form — so that they can shift the water bills to new tenants.
I’m a landlord. I’ve done the necessary lead-abatement work on our rental unit, and have the necessary certification. That certification, as noted in the thread-starter, is trivial to obtain copies of once the work has been done.
Why is our “Democratic” House working so hard to help sleazy landlords?
If this amendment had gone through the Committee process in the form of a bill (something that House leadership insists upon for proposals they disfavor), some more light might have been shed upon it. But alas, the House adopted it without any committee review back in April and now it’s back for another bite at the apple.
This afternoon, the House adopted the amendment I wrote about in this post. On to the Senate.
Anybody who hears any remotely credible explanation of why I’m wrong and how it is that this bill would make only minor and benign tweaks will be thanked with a copy of The Scarlet Letter.
I’ll be surprised if Ms. Provost supported this kind of nonsense.
The Constitution and the House rules allow every member to say “no”. I am sorry this POS is one she did not object to.
should all cause calls or emails to legislators.
The more calls and emails to legislators opposing the House amendment (which can be identified as “the water submeter amendment to the House supplemental budget, House 3773”) the better.
To borrow from the wisdom of Judy Meredith, praise can work wonders under the Golden Dome. Members of the Senate (who will be soon considering the House bill) deserve credit for saying no to it the first time it came around and support for their continuing opposition.
On the House side, it seems certain that House leadership orchestrated the inclusion of the water submetering provision in a way to keep House members in the dark as long as possible. Leadership has supported this provision for quite a while, so in the interests of transparency they might have included it in the bill that the House Ways and Means reported on Monday, which would have given members more time to learn about it. Instead, it was filed as an amendment (which disguised leadership’s support for it) less than 24 hours before the beginning of debate. So, to my way of looking at these things, most House members were understandably caught off guard and it certainly shouldn’t be assumed that they are also supporters.