Next on Obama's hit list: small contractors

On April 22 (Earth Day!) new EPA regulations go into effect that could take down many a small contractor.

It’s all about the rules on lead paint removal, which heretofore had been enforced only for work on homes that were old enough to have lead paint and in which small children or pregnant women (the populations at risk) resided. But that’s not good enough for our nanny state; oh no. Now the rules will apply to work done on any home built before 1978, eliminating the previous sensible escape hatch whereby a homeowner could opt out of the regulations if there were no at-risk individuals living in the house.

You might ask why it is that a homeowner contemplating a remodeling job should be deprived of the ability to refuse to pay for costly lead protection procedures that are not needed. Well, here’s your answer: “this option (the opt-out) was ripe for abuse.” In other words, the government can’t trust people to do what’s in the best interest of their own children or pregnancies, and so we all must suffer.

And suffer we will, especially the contractors. To be in compliance by April 22 would mean that every contractor contemplating a job that would disturb more than six square feet of a home’s area (and this includes not just carpentry but plumbing, window installation, and heating and AC installation) would need to have completed a one-day course in the matter, necessitating taking a day off and spending about two hundred dollars. But since there are nowhere near enough certified teachers, therefore the vast majority of America’s contractors could not possibly comply by April 22 even if they wanted to.

But that’s relatively minor compared to larger problems connected with the new rules, such as the fact that they will increase the costs of renovation for both contractor and homeowner just at a time when the industry and the consumer can least handle it.