PROVIDENCE -- The Rhode Island House yesterday overwhelmingly approved landmark legislation to combat lead-paint poisoning of children in the state's inner cities by holding landlords responsible if their buildings poison children.
The House's 72-to-18 vote in support of legislation sponsored by Sen. Thomas Izzo, D-Cranston, and Rep. Joseph Almeida, D-Providence, sends the children's lead-abatement measure to Governor Almond, who a spokesman said "strongly supports" the measure and will sign it into law.
Rep. Joseph Trillo, R-Warwick, launched a strenuous but unsuccessful 11th-hour attack on the lead bill, saying it would raise rents for poor families by holding landlords liable for lead poisoning.
"This lead-paint bill targets the landlords and poor people," Trillo said. He said rents would inevitably rise because landlords would pass on the costs of lead-abatement to renters.
The lead-abatement legislation approved yesterday was the result of four years of work by Izzo and lobbying by such children's advocacy organizations as Rhode Island Kids Count, the HELP Lead Safe Center, and the Childhood Lead Action Project. It passed the Senate unanimously last month.
Trillo asserted that advocates pushed the legislation through without properly consulting landlords, but Izzo said that this year he brought a wide spectrum of interest groups into negotiations on the legislation.
For example, representatives of the insurance industry, the trial lawyers and home builders decided to support this year's version of the legislation, Izzo said.
"This is a victory for the kids," he said. Izzo also said that the interests of landlords had been considered.
"This is just feel-good legislation to you liberals," said Trillo, one of only 14 Republicans in the House. "We already have severe enough legislation on the books."
Trillo was joined by Rep. John Barr, D-Lincoln, in saying it would raise rents by forcing high lead-abatement costs on landlords. But other House members, such as Representatives Elizabeth Dennigan, D-East Providence, and Paul Sherlock, D-Warwick, said it was needed to help children and the taxpayers, who must foot the cost of health care and special education for children poisoned by lead paint that flakes off old houses.
Using data supplied by the state Health Department, Marissa Rappaport, a Brown University senior, determined that just 244 landlords own housing units in Providence where 2,644 young children have been poisoned by lead paint in the past nine years.
The legislation approved yesterday requires notification of other tenants in a building where a child is poisoned. It requires the state Health Department to issue rules to prevent landlords from retaliating against tenants who file lead-paint complaints. And it lifts the so-called "innocent owner" provision that now protects many landlords from lawsuits.
The measure also requires public notice of properties considered unsafe for children and orders landlords to post signs on their properties declaring them unsafe for small children. And it prohibits insurance companies from excluding lead coverage in liability policies they write for most landlords.
Izzo also said newspaper coverage of childhood lead poisoning helped raise the public profile of the problem. He cited a series on childhood lead poisoning by staff writer Peter B. Lord and photographer John Freidah of The Providence Journal and coverage in The Newport Daily News.
"This bill is about protection of children," Almeida said.
