Advocacy Update

Forrest WallWritten by Forrest Wall, CAE, Staff Vice President and Industry Relations

Effort to Reform Apartment Inspection Law Continues
As you may recall, in the 2013-14 state legislative session, AAM sought important reforms to the law that provides the framework for local government inspection of apartment communities. The legislation included a resident right of permission to allow local government entry to inspect, the inclusion of townships under the law, a limitation on local requirements for extreme advance payment of inspection fees, and limits on registration fees. After Senate passage, the bill failed to generate enough support in the House of Representatives before the clock ran out on the end of the legislative session. Efforts have continued behind the scenes in the first half of this year to generate support for the provisions in last year’s bill. As a part of these discussions, it was decided to split the amendments up into multiple bills in an effort to simplify the debate. The first bill in this series – Senate Bill 394 – was introduced in June by Senator David Robertson (R-26th District). This bill proposes to amend the Housing Law of Michigan to include townships so they are governed in the same way as cities and villages, as well as amendment to mandate that inspection fees shall not be required more than six months in advance of the inspection. The second bill in the series will address the resident right of permission for local government entry to inspect. As of this writing the second bill was being drafted with an expected introduction in early September.

AAM-PAC Needs You!
AAM continues to be a strong and effective voice in Lansing for the multifamily rental industry. Our efforts have yielded numerous successes in recent years, including the following victories:

Trespasser Liability Law – protects property owners from liability in situations where trespassers are injured on the property. Interest Rate on Tax Tribunal Appeals – increased the statutory interest rate on Tax Tribunal appeals. Nonrecourse Mortgage Loan Provisions – helped to rectify the problems with certain loan covenants in nonrecourse commercial loan transactions.

As outlined above, a top legislative priority for this session is our proposal for Apartment Inspection Law Reform.

The best way to support your industry’s legislative program is to contribute to AAM-PAC. AAM-PAC is the Apartment Association’s political action committee, which utilizes contributions from members and aggregates them into one fund. This fund is used to financially support those elected officials who understand the important role of rental housing in Michigan’s economy. In short, we do the legwork for you to find the candidates who will best represent your business, and then support their campaign.

I invite you to participate with your peers as an AAM-PAC contributor. Remember, contributions must be made via personal, partnership, LLP, or LLC check or credit cards. Please call me at 248-862-1004 to make your contribution today!

This entry was posted in 2015, September 2015. Bookmark the permalink.