The Accredited Snow Contractors Association (ASCA) held its first Colorado Legislative Day this week in Denver, the state capitol.
Twenty representatives from a dozen companies were on hand to educate state legislators on snow and ice management and the issues and obstacles industry professionals face and are working to overcome.
Those professional snow and ice management companies in attendance with the ASCA included:
• Brightview Landscape
• Bob Popp Building Services, Inc.
• CAM Services
• CCIG Insurance
• CDI, Inc.
• Denver Commercial Property Services Inc
• JLS Landscape & Sprinkler, Inc.
• Keesen Landscape Management, Inc.
• Martinson Snow Removal
• Metco Landscaping
• Snow Management Services, Inc.
• Weisburg Landscape Maintenance
In addition to educating legislators on the issue snow and ice management companies face, the group’s primary mission was to garner support and sponsorship of the ASCA’s model legislation, The Snow Removal Liability Limitations Act. In short, the bill addresses indemnification language and hold-harmless agreements and makes them null and void. This puts snow and ice decisions in the hands of the professionals and removes some of the risks off the shoulders of professional contractors.
The day was extremely busy with at meetings every half hour. The group was split in the event multiple meetings were scheduled at the same time.
Colorado’s legislature is a little different than most states. They are in session from January through mid-May, then they are out of session for the remainder of the year. While they do conduct legislative business, they do not vote on anything other than during the first six months of the year (barring a catastrophe). So, it was critical for us to get our message to them before they closed session.
We had many great meetings and most legislatures felt we had a strong case. We also have a commitment for at least one of the legislatures to look much more deeply into this, and likely become the sponsor of our bill. We will work together over the next six months to get the bill introduced with them, and likely have an opportunity to get our bill passed early in 2018.
About the author
Kevin Gilbride is the ASCA's Executive Director.
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