The 2001 Legislative Year in Review

By D. Carlos Kaslow

The 2001 legislative year has been a good one for theself-storage industry. Eight state legislatures considered more than a dozenbills that would directly affect self storage. Four states enacted lawssupported by the industry, and only one of four bills opposed by the industryhas any chance of passing this term.

Arizona and Missouri enacted industry-sponsored late-fee bills. Both effortswere based on model legislation developed by the Self Storage Association. Bothbills contain four elements that are vital to positive late-fee legislation:

Arizona, California, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina and West Virginia nowhave laws that affect the way storage operators set late fees. The NorthCarolina law is the most restrictive and was passed three years ago at theinstigation of a legislator who had a bad experience at a self-storage facility.

West Virginia became the 47th state to enact a self-storage lien law, whichincludes a section on the late fees a self-storage operator may charge. So thestate's operators were able to take care of two issues with a single bill.Alaska and Nebraska are the only other states that have not enacted self-storagelien legislation. There is a lien bill pending in Vermont, but prospects forpassage do not look good.

While the industry had several successes in passing industry-supportedlegislation, it was also successful in stopping anti-industry bills. The ArizonaMini Storage Association was able to derail one of the strangest bills everintroduced. The bill would have amended the state self-storage lien law to makelien sales far more difficult to conduct. Some investigation revealed the billwas the handiwork of a frequent buyer at self-storage lien sales. He thoughtauction prices were too high and believed that by making the sale process moredifficult, auction sale prices would drop. This was a truly crazy legislativeidea and AMSA was able to kill this bill in short order.

California self-storage operators faced the prospect of being regulated bythe state Public Utilities Commission. The real target of the bill was thestorage-to-go business, but traditional self-storage operators were beingincluded in the bill's regulatory scope as well. The SSA opposed the regulationof any aspect of the storage business as a public utility but was especiallyconcerned that traditional self-storage business, which is part of thecommercial rental real estate industry, might become a regulated utility inCalifornia. Fortunately, the bill was amended several times and its applicationto traditional self-storage was deleted. There is still hope the bill will notpass, but final legislative action had not been taken at press time.

The self-storage industry is too large and too successful to be ignored bythe nation's state legislatures. Storage operators need to stay alert forlegislative developments in their states. More important, they need to beorganized so they can take action to promote their legislative agenda and toreact swiftly when hostile legislation is introduced. The SSA is working toassist the industry in achieving this goal. The association now trackslegislation in all 50 states and is working with storage operators at the statelevel to have networks in place to promote the industry legislative agenda. Onequestion every storage operator should ask is: What would we do if a nutty pieceof legislation like that bill in Arizona were introduced in our state? If youdon't have a good answer to this question, you may want to give the SSA a call.

D. Carlos Kaslow is an attorney in Berkeley, Calif., and is the foundingpartner of the Self Storage Legal Network and author of the Self StorageLegal Review, a bi-monthly newsletter covering self-storage legal issues. Heis also general counsel for the national Self Storage Association. For moreinformation, visit www.selfstorage.org.