Governor Inslee signs telecommunications bill

Local telecommunications workers expressed relief after Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill they called necessary to continue their work.

HB 2253 states that telecommunications work includes providing power, instead of requiring an electrician's license to install cables that carry both data and electricity to operate devices. It also makes it easier for workers to get an electrician's license.

The governor signed the bill last month after it passed both chambers unanimously.

Dave Cerul, owner of Moses Lake's B&D Communications, said Labor and Industries (L&I) had tried to limit them to working with telephone cabling.

"But that same cable...is used to power a device like a VOIP phone or wireless access point," he said.

"They were saying that's an electrician job but I've been doing it for 16 years now," Cerul said. 

Quincy resident Bob Pusey, owner of Connect Telecommunications, said he was very happy with the bill, and that it potentially prevented a cost increase for customers.

"Consumers would have had to find someone else to do the work, and that could have gotten more expensive," Pusey said. "It's an answer to a prayer as far as I'm concerned."

Rep. Matt Manweller (R-Ellensburg) was the prime sponsor of the measure.

"This will allow people who install telephones and Internet cables to keep their jobs after an adverse ruling by the Department of Labor and Industries," he said. "It clarifies what telecommunications companies have been doing for twenty years and is simply a case of technology moving faster than the rules and regulations being put in place for this industry."

Rod Mutch, chief electrical inspector at L&I said that when the telecommunications specialization was created in 2000, it allowed work with voice and data signals, not operating power.

"This takes the language in the original telecommunications bill and expands it to allow them to install a limited amount of power," Mutch said.

He said the department gathered a multifaceted group of industry members to update the law.

Manweller's bill also allows telecommunications workers to apply their hours on the job to a specialty electrician license, if they obtain a certificate from L&I by Jul. 1, 2015.

Manweller said it was currently challenging for telecommunications installers to log the necessary hours for a specialty electrician license.

"Allowing the 09 (telecommunications) installers to count their hours will allow them to take the test and prevent us from doing another scope of practice bill in a couple years," he said.

"We can't spend four years to get (certified) for what we've already been doing for 16 years," Cerul said.

He said the law was needed to catch up to technology.

"Ever since Alexander Graham Bell told Watson 'come here, I need you," there was some kind of voltage involved," Cerul said.

Mutch did not have an estimate available of the total number of workers who would be affected by the legislation, but he said there were 352 licensed telecommunications contractors in the state last year.

The measure went into effect immediately to prevent workers from facing citations.