Member Relations Committee Update

What is ASHI’s Member Relations Committee? In April 2020, the ASHI Board of Directors accepted a policy that formalized the new Member Relations Committee (MRC). The MRC has three subcommittees: Membership, Chapter Relations, and Legislative. Each subcommittee has a chair and a number of members. Subcommittees meet regularly to achieve their goals.

Ideas to increase the value of ASHI membership may be presented to this group from various sources: the general membership, the ASHI Board or staff, or from within the MRC itself.

All members of the MRC discuss the proposed new concepts before they designate a subcommittee to concentrate on developing the idea. Once a proposed concept is assigned to a subcommittee, that team goes to work. They will ensure the full MRC is updated and used as a sounding board during periodic working sessions. This collaborative work will help develop the best possible programs and features for ASHI members.

The MRC may also monitor and, when appropriate, assist with state and federal legislative issues as well as licensing and other regulatory issues. The MRC is permitted to make recommendations to the ASHI Board about programs to assist struggling chapters and ineffective chapters and may also assist ASHI staff with developing training programs for chapter leaders.

In 2022, the committee is working to:

• Build out chapter resources on the website (one new topic a month)
• Develop a chapter president toolkit
• Develop a report writing content library

The MRC’s biggest project to date has been its legislative emails. One of the more exciting and problematic bills, which has now passed in Virginia, will require home inspectors to inspect and report whether the home’s smoke detectors are in “good working order,” which has yet to be defined at the time of this publishing.

Currently, the MRC is reviewing actions related only to home inspections or radon and providing updates to members in affected states. ASHI is working to automate the process so inspectors who work in multiple states will be able to access the information directly from the member area of the ASHI website.

We recently got more insight about the MRC’s recent work from Todd Edly, legislative chairman for the ASHI Legislative Committee, as part of a brief Q&A:

What does the MRC Legislative Subcommittee do?

The Legislative Subcommittee is a volunteer group that operates as one of the defined working groups of the MRC to closely monitor legislation, regulations, agency documents, executive orders, and ballot measures for all of our members in every state. Currently we monitor topics related to home inspections and radon. We are continuing to expand our searches to bring you the best up-to-date information possible.

Being informed can assist all home inspectors in supporting, opposing, lobbying, or crafting current, proposed, or future legislation and regulations. It has a great effect on which items get enacted, and that in turn affects your business and the home inspection industry. Thirty-eight states currently have some sort of legislation or regulation on home inspectors. Being able to see which states are regulating our industry—or may be in the future—is a great asset to us.

What is the StateNet computer program?

StateNet is the service ASHI has selected to track legislation and regulations in all 50 states. Any legislation that may concern home inspectors is reviewed and, if deemed important, emailed out to all home inspectors in that state.

We are currently working with StateNet to provide the legislation for each state in a map on the member section of ASHI’s website. When implementation is completed, members will be able to click on their states of interest and pull up any current legislation or regulations pertaining to that state. If an inspector works in several states, they can click on each state to view any activity that may be available. This feature should be available in Summer 2022.

Todd Edly is an ASHI Certified Inspector and serves as chair of the ASHI National Legislative Committee. He was the 2017 CREIA Home Inspector of the Year. He owns Home Inspections Plus, serving NW Northern Lower Michigan, and has been a home inspector for more than 12 years.