Caveat homeowner: Lawmakers support fair balance in home transactions

Clint Talbott, for the editorial board
Friday, March 30, 2007

Four years ago, the home-building industry bought some income protection from the state Legislature. This year, lawmakers are trying to nudge the scales back toward a balance between seller and buyer.

Not surprisingly, home builders are displeased. But the industry's financial interests are no longer the Legislature's driving concern.

In 2003, the state Legislature approved a law limiting the ability of home buyers to sue for negligent construction, and sharply limiting the damages the buyers could collect. Under that law — which the home-building interests spent $355,000 lobbying for — home buyers were required to try to cajole home builders into fixing shoddy construction before filing suit.

Apparently to some home builders, those barriers to consumer protection weren't high enough. Rep. Jack Pommer, a Boulder Democrat, says major home builders have been including warranty escape clauses, leaving some home buyers with little or no recourse for faulty construction.

A press release issued Wednesday by state Democrats contrasted home builders' promises in 2003 with their actions in 2007. "With this (2003) law, builders still end up being responsible to fix a problem, and good builders will always do that," Amber Homes President Jim Harmon told Colorado Builder magazine then.

Today, the Dems note, Amber Homes contracts include this clause: "To the fullest extent permitted by law, all other warranties, expressed or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, workmanship and habitability are disclaimed, excluded and waived."

That inconsistency explains the genesis of House Bill 1138, which is sponsored by Pommer and which cleared the state House on Thursday. The bill would, rather modestly, prevent home buyers from being forced to forfeit their right to seek redress for faulty construction.

On Wednesday, Harmon of Amber Homes told the Rocky Mountain News that the central issue (fair warranties) was a ruse. He lambasted the trial lawyers, who he said are behind HB 1138 and are tilting against a "problem that doesn't exist."

If there's no problem, why are some home builders unwilling to warranty their work on basic measures of quality — such as "habitability"?

Rep. Debbie Stafford, an Aurora Republican, was among those supporting the Pommer bill. She did so even though, she alleges, a fellow legislator warned her that she'd be targeted in future elections by the home-building barons.

As Pommer explained this week, HB 1138 is neither anti-builder nor anti-business. "This gives homeowners a fighting chance if they find out that their new home has serious problems," Pommer said. "We're leaving in place the limits on liability that the home builders say they need, but restoring the legal rights homeowners need to protect the huge investment they make in their house."

No "good builder" would object to that. For most people, the purchase of a home is the most significant investment in life. Buyers deserve more than a contractually enshrined caveat emptor.

Clint Talbott, for the editorial board

Big day for renewable energy

Ritter signs bills in Boulder County

By Todd Neff
Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Gov. Bill Ritter signed two major energy bills Tuesday, requiring major utilities to boost the electricity they generate through renewable sources and fostering the development of electrical transmission to remote wind farms and future solar-generating stations.

Ritter chose a patch of rocky grassland at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's National Wind Technology Center in southern Boulder County as the spot for the signing ceremony, his words amplified by electricity from a fuel cell running on wind-generated hydrogen.

"It is a perfect setting to sign these two bills," Ritter said.

House Bill 1281, of which State Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, was a key sponsor, requires large investor-owned utilities such as Xcel Energy to gradually build to 20 percent generation by wind, solar, biomass and other forms of renewable energy by 2020.

The previous standard, passed through Amendment 37 by Colorado voters in November 2004, called for 10 percent generation via renewables by 2015.

Unlike Amendment 37, the new law includes rural electric cooperatives. Their target is lower: 10 percent renewables by 2020. In both cases, home and business electric bills could increase up to 2 percent to pay for renewables.

John Nielsen, energy program director for Boulder environmental policy group Western Resource Advocates — which helped craft the upgraded standard — said bringing in rural electrical cooperatives was a key part of the bill.

"They're brought in at a modest level, and I think they'll be able to push ahead with renewable-energy tech-

nologies in a way they haven't to date," Nielsen said.

Paula Connolly, Xcel Energy's assistant general counsel, said Xcel will have met the Amendment 37 target by the end of this year and that the company aims to beat the new law's timetable also. Xcel and most rural electric cooperatives supported the bill.

Ritter said the new standard will add $2 billion to Colorado's economy.

Will Coyne, program director for Environment Colorado, said the bill will cut soot, smog, mercury and heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions 11 percent by 2020 while creating thousands of jobs and saving 18 billion gallons of water.

Blake Jones, president of Boulder's Namaste Solar Electric, said the bill is great news for the solar industry. Like its predecessor, it requires that 0.8 percent of the state's electricity demand be met with solar energy. The new bill will double the number of solar panels to be installed to meet that demand.

"It means more jobs, and it means we can continue to grow," said Jones, whose company has already grown from three workers to 22 in about two years.

Ritter also signed Senate Bill 100, which lets utilities charge customers for new electricity-transmission capacity as it's built rather than waiting until the new lines begin operation.

Xcel's Connolly said the new transmission law will help solve a chicken-or-egg problem that makes it hard to connect rural and often distant troves of wind or solar energy with the population centers that need the electricity.

"The combination of these two bills will help us build the transmission necessary to these resources so we can get more renewable energy on our system as soon as possible," she said.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Todd Neff at (303) 473-1327 or nefft@dailycamera.com.