Dealers bring issues to the Hill

Washington, D.C. -- National Lumber and Building Material Dealers Association legislative director Ben Gann provided the bullet points for a lumber-industry rallying cry during a Tuesday morning session here at the association's Spring Meeting & Legislative Conference.

Shortly before NLBMDA members spread out across the capitol for meetings with legislators, Gann hammered on the three priority-issue talking points: EPA lead rule reform, the Marketplace Fairness Act, and the NLBMDA's signature issue -- the Innocent Sellers Fairness Act.

In regard to the latter, the NLBMDA believes unfounded and unfair lawsuits are a real threat to lumber dealers. Even if these lawsuits are dismissed, it's an expensive proposition to defend against them, Gann said.

Back on Capitol Hill, "innocent sellers" was the first talking point of a small contingent of California dealers making office visits to legislators. Outside the office of Congresswoman Janice Hahn (D-Calif.), J.D. Saunders of Campbell, Calif.-based Economy Lumber pressed a legislative assistant on the three key issues. He was joined in his lobbying by fellow California dealer Sean Fogarty of Osborne Lumber Co. in Newark, California, and his wife Roslyn.

While the California dealers felt they made some headway on the Innocent Sellers bill, they felt some resistance to the Lead Paint Rule reform from the Hahn office.

The lumberyards' talking point was to ask legislators to cosponsor the Lead Exposure Reduction Amendments Act and support reforms to EPA's Lead: Renovation, Repair and Painting program. The law requires renovation work to take certain precautions when disturbing more than 6 square feet of the interior of houses built prior to 1978, or any window and door replacement project.

As the NLBMDA explains it, the rule originally allowed homeowners to waive testing and the use of special work practices if there were no pregnant women or children six years of age or younger living in the home. The opt-out was removed in 2010, making millions of additional houses targets for unnecessary and expensive work, according to the NLBMDA.

Another issue for the dealers is the lack of reliable test kits.

"Like anyone else, we certainly are opposed to lead poisoning, but there at least needs to be a reliable test available," Saunders said.

The NLBMDA's third key issue involves online sales tax fairness. The association encourages the adoption of the Marketplace Fairness Act that grants states the authority to require businesses to collect and remit sales and use taxes on remote sales through a simplified system.

These taxes are already on the books, Gann says -- but they're not being collected. That means many online retailers are enjoying a tax advantage over community-based lumberyards.