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The following is a summary of key events related to building standards and the BSC. This history helps to explain the development of the current processes by which building standards are adopted, approved, published, used as design and construction requirements, and enforced.
1905
One of the earliest attempts to unify codes on the national level was the National Board of Fire Underwriters successfully promoting a "Recommended National Building Code."
1909
The first public building law enacted in California was called the State Tenement Housing Act.
1913
The State Division of Immigration and Housing and the State Division of Safety were created. Each had separate regulatory authority that established the unfortunate precedent of having different state departments responding individually to specific building problems that had statewide impacts.
1927
The Pacific Coast Building Officials — now the International Conference of Building Officials (ICBO) — published the first Uniform Building Code (UBC). The ICBO family of Uniform Codes has been adopted by reference or has been used as a pattern by most local governments. The UBC established uniformity of building codes in California.
1933
The Field Act became law as a legislative response to the Long Beach earthquake. The Act assigned responsibility for the design and construction of public schools to the State Architect. This is an example of a separate regulatory authority adopting building standards in its own title - in this case, Title 21.
1949
House Resolution No. 183 established a panel to study the building code issue and report back to the Legislature. One of the comments in that report was:
The state has no one agency concerned principally with building regulations. There are at least ten state agencies having some degree of authority in this field, and not one of them is responsible for taking the lead in coordinating the activity of all of them. This produces two kinds of confusion — conflict between state agencies themselves and too many kinds of relationships between state and local agencies. There is no consistent pattern for defining the relative responsibility of the state and local agencies in enforcing state regulations.
1953
The initial State Building Standards Law was enacted (Chapter 1500, Statutes of 1953). As originally enacted, the law established a California Building Standards Commission with limited powers to control the building standards regulatory process. The Commission could not question the substantive provisions of the code if it found technical defects or that the provisions would have a negative impact on the public. Also, the Commission had no control over the filing of a building standard with the Secretary of State, and no appellant powers. Because of its limited powers to control the building standard regulatory process, the Commission was unsuccessful in its attempts to resolve longstanding problems that made it almost impossible for users of the code to understand and comply with its requirements.
Building standards continued to be buried in different titles of the California Administrative Code: OSHA in Title 8, Health in Title 17, Fire Marshal in Title 19, Hospitals in Title 22, etc. There was no codification or indexing, with standards scattered through the 30,000 plus pages of the California Administrative Code. Enforcement was complicated, costly, and in some cases, nonexistent.
1957
The Senate Interim Committee on Governmental Organization reviewed building standards and reported:
The handicaps under which the California Building Standards Commission operates emphasize the inadequacy of halfway measures. The promulgation of the State Building Standards Code would eliminate some of the confusion resulting from uncoordinated building regulations issued by the various state agencies, but would not be a substitute for an integrated department or agency with the responsibility for administration of the State's building laws activities.
1970
SB 952 (Moscone) proposed to create a Board of Building and Safety with sole authority to adopt building standards. It was opposed by the state agencies who were adopting building standards. It was vetoed.
1972
The Hospital Seismic Safety Act was a legislative response to the San Fernando earthquake of 1971. The Act provided for state-regulated design and construction of certain emergency health facilities. The regulations were placed in Title 22.
1973
AB 2265 (Greene), an administration bill, would have abolished the Department and Commission of Housing and Community Development, and created a Department of Building and Safety. It did not pass.
1975
The Warren-Alquist State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Act was based on a legislative finding that the rapid growth rate in the demand for electric energy was in part due to wasteful, uneconomic, inefficient, and unnecessary uses of power. A continuation of this trend would have resulted in:
- The serious depletion or irreversible commitment of energy and land and water resources
- Potential threats to the state's environmental quality
The Legislature also found there was a pressing need to accelerate research and development of alternative sources of energy. This policy resulted in a situation where more than 20 agencies, ranging from the Barbers' Licensing Board to the State Architect, can adopt building standards and publish them in the separate titles of the California Code of Regulations.
1978
To correct the problems and confusion resulting from the uncoordinated proliferation of conflicting, duplicate, and overlapping state regulations, SB 331 (Robbins) (Chapter 1152, Statutes of 1979), effective January 1, 1980, provided the Commission with broader powers.
As a result of SB 331, all proposed building regulations adopted by various state agencies must be reviewed and approved by the Commission before the regulations have any force or effect. Further, the legislation called for all building standards to be removed from other titles of the California Code of Regulations and put into a single code — Title 24 — that the Commission is responsible for codifying and publishing. In addition, since January 1980, the Commission is charged with reviewing proposed regulations to make sure they meet the following criteria — commonly called the nine-point criteria — found in Health and Safety Code Section 18930(a):
- The regulation does not conflict, overlap, or duplicate other regulations.
- The regulation is within parameters of enabling legislation.
- The public interest requires the adoption of the regulation.
- The regulation is not unreasonable, arbitrary, unfair, or capricious.
- The cost to the public is reasonable, based on the overall benefit derived from the regulation.
- The regulation is not necessarily ambiguous or vague.
- Applicable national standards, published standards, and model codes have been incorporated.
- The format of the regulation is consistent with the BSC's format.
- The regulation, if it promotes fire and panic safety as determined by the State Fire Marshal, has their written approval.
In addition, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requirements related to the adoption of regulations (Government Code Section 11346 et al.) must be met.
1988
AB 4616 (Lancaster), effective January 1, 1989, provided that state agencies that adopt administrative regulations related to the implementation or enforcement of building standards must submit those regulations to the Commission for approval.
SB 2871 (Marks) provided that an amendment, addition, or deletion to the California Building Standards Code, adopted by a city, county, or city and county pursuant to provisions enacted by the bill (together with all applicable portions of the California Building Standards Code), shall become effective 180 days after its publication by the Commission. The bill also required that the building standards contained in specified codes (model codes) published by the Commission apply, with certain exceptions, to all occupancies throughout the state.
1990
AB 4082 (Chandler) required the Commission, in conjunction with all state agencies involved in the adoption of building standards and the interested public, to conduct a comprehensive review of state building standards and statutes relating to state building standards, beginning January 1, 1991 and continuing through December 31, 1992.
1991
AB 47 (Eastin) transferred the adoption authority of the following state agencies to the Commission:
- Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD)
- Office of the State Fire Marshal (OFSM)
- Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD)
- Office (now Division) of the State Architect (DSA)
Several pieces of legislation were introduced at this time in response to the Loma Prieta earthquake. In particular, AB 204 (Cortese) increased the regulatory authority of the Commission to include, in general, existing buildings having at least one unreinforced masonry bearing wall. Specifically, AB 204 required the Commission to adopt and publish by reference the Appendix Chapter I of the Uniform Code for Building Conservation (UCBC) to provide standards for buildings specified in that appendix.
1992
AB 2358 (Frazee) exempted local jurisdictions that, on or before January 1, 1993, adopted programs for mitigating potentially hazardous buildings, from the application of building standards contained in the Uniform Code for Building Conservation (UCBC) as adopted by the Commission.
AB 2963 (Hauser), effective January 1, 1993, specified that only the building standards approved by the Commission that are effective at the local level at the time an application for a building permit is submitted, apply to plans and specifications as well as to construction work performed under that building permit.
AB 3515 (Lancaster), signed in 1992, was primarily a "clean-up" bill to reorganize and clarify certain provisions in the State Building Standards Law. However, there were three substantive amendments:
- The bill mandated that the Office of the State Fire Marshal review proposed building standards which, in fact, affect fire and panic safety, regardless of a state agency's intent when the standards were written.
- The effective date of regulations that implement or enforce building standards was specified in the Law to be 30 days after filing with the Secretary of State.
- The effective date of building standards adopted by the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board (OSHSB) was also set at 30 days after filing with the Secretary of State.
SB 1588 (Kopp) required that the publication date established by the Commission for the California Building Standards Code be no earlier than the date that the Code is available for purchase by the public.
1993
AB 1904 (W. Brown) expanded the exemption for local jurisdictions that, on or before January 1, 1993, adopted programs for mitigating potentially hazardous buildings, from the application of building standards contained in the contained in the Uniform Code for Building Conservation (UCBC) as adopted by the Commission.
AB 2351 (Committee on Ways and Means) deleted Health and Safety Code Subsection 18949.6(d), which had provided for the new annual building code advisory groups.
1994
AB 1780 (Hauser) directed the Commission to prepare a comprehensive listing of all state amendments developed for publication in the California Building Standards Code, Title 24, Part 2, referencing the 1994 Uniform Building Code, for the period beginning January 1, 1995 through December 31, 1995. The bill also required the Commission to determine whether or not existing state amendments in Part 2 continued to be justified under the criteria set forth in the State Building Standards Law, specifically Health and Safety Code Section 18930.
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