Dive Brief:

• The California Assembly Business and Professions Committee rejected a bill late Tuesday that would have required builders and remodelers to tell regulators when they are convicted of a crime or settle a civil suit related to construction defects.

• Lawmakers — voting 7-3 in opposition — said they wanted more time to consider the proposal. It will now become a two-year bill, giving the authors time to negotiate and clarify the legislation's terms.

• The proposal was a response to the news that the contractor who oversaw the construction of the Berkeley apartment building whose balcony collapsed and killed six students last month paid more than $26.5 million over three years to settle lawsuits involving balcony collapses. 

Dive Insight:

Several committee members said they supported the purpose of the proposal, but they were concerned with the implications of forcing the collection of the settlement data without clear information regarding how the data would be used for enforcement. 

Berkeley officials, who pointed to rotted wood beams as the cause of the Berkeley balcony’s collapse, supported the bill, but the California Building Industry Association and United Contractors opposed it.

A CBIA lawyer told the Associated Press that construction companies sometimes pay to settle civil suits, even when they are not at fault, so those payouts “are not a good indicator at all of who a bad actor is. We could have done everything we were supposed to do and still have liability” under the proposed law.