Cracking The Code: Reclaiming Building Standards for Public Interest
A close analysis of the US building code development process reveals a system rife with capture by both industry and government interests, in which the costs and benefits of regulations are improperly measured (if measured at all), special interests enjoy outsize influence and minimal scrutiny, and elected officials have largely abdicated their role of weighing tradeoffs and representing the public interest. By their nature, all industry regulatory schemes are beset by a diverse array of political interests. Building codes are unique, however, in how the outsourcing of the public rulemaking process to private third-party standards organizations stacks the deck in favor of narrow interests while simultaneously stripping away basic government standards of accountability and transparency.
The current process reveals the drawbacks of diminished state capacity for doing this crucial regulatory work “in-house”—and belies the common assumption that highly technical rulemaking should be the exclusive domain of “experts,” not politicians. Building codes contain complex tradeoffs between safety, affordability, livability, and sustainability that are inherently political. The mantle of technocratic neutrality claimed by the current process obscures this basic fact, removing from public view the inherent balancing of societal costs and benefits contained within the development of these rules. To realign codes with the public interest, reform is needed to reassert democratic oversight, transparency, and rigorous tradeoff analysis within the process.
