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Daily Hampshire Gazette - Senator presses to add elevator inspectors
By Dan Crowley - 5/21/2010

NORTHAMPTON - Calling the state's elevator inspection program "crazy economics," state Sen. Stanley C. Rosenberg said he is filing a budget amendment today that would add 15 elevator inspectors to the state Department of Public Safety, an agency mired in a backlog of inspections that has cost the state millions of dollars in lost revenues.

Rosenberg's office contacted a senior public safety official Thursday after a Gazette front-page report revealed nearly every city-owned elevator in Northampton is out of compliance with state inspections, among many others in the region.

The state DPS has cited a lack of staffing as the main reason it is behind on inspecting the state's 37,000-plus elevators annually. Forty state inspectors conduct elevator safety checks at public and privately owned facilities, including three workers who cover the Springfield area full time.

"I said what's it cost to fix the problem, and he said, #I need 15 new inspectors,'" said Rosenberg, an Amherst Democrat and president pro tempore of the state Senate. "This is a public safety issue, and it's crazy economics if the thing pays for itself."

A state DPS spokesman confirmed the conversation with Rosenberg's office and said the agency would provide all information requested by the lawmaker.

Last week, the state elevator inspection program came under scrutiny for the second time in six years when state Auditor A. Joseph DeNucci released a report that found 11,419, or 30 percent, of 37,494 elevator inspection certificates issued by the state DPS were expired.

He estimated the backlog has cost the state as much as $6.5 million in lost revenues in recent years, including $4.3 million when elevator inspections had not been conducted for years or when fines were not collected from elevator owners who failed to apply for annual inspections.

A Gazette report Thursday found that 92 percent of city-owned elevators in Northampton had not been inspected in more than a year. One elevator in the downtown parking garage received a 90-day temporary certificate in 2008 because a problem was identified and the state never returned to reinspect the lift. Some 40 percent of two dozen other elevators spot-checked by the newspaper in the region were out of compliance, primarily because of state inaction.

Rosenberg said it could cost $1.2 million or more to fund 15 additional elevator inspectors. His amendment is expected to be debated next week during budget deliberations in the Senate. If these inspectors get on the state payroll, the revenues their work would generate would eventually cover their costs, he said.

Elevator owners must pay a $400 fee to the state for annual inspections. Rosenberg said he is proposing to create a retained earnings account within the Department of Public Safety to safeguard these funds.

"I want to make sure the money gets to the department to pay for these people and doesn't get siphoned off somewhere else," he said.

Given the severe cuts many state agencies continue to endure, Rosenberg said it's not hard for the state's elevator inspection problems to be "out of sight and out of mind for people."

"We're going to get this on the radar screen," he said.