There were around 50 people in attendance. There was a Fire Sprinkler apprentice group in attendance. We had quite a few of our members present, there was a good electrical presence.
Speaking at the hearing included one from the Michigan Home Builders Association, Robert Filka, spoke against sprinklers and arc-faults and stated the Regulatory Impact Statement did not cover all the changes. He also stated that removing the electrical sections needed to be done by the legislators. Jeffrey Bowdell, Building Official spoke about the state should be using the model codes that are vetted at the national level with more expertise than vetting them again in Michigan with people of less expertise. There were four that spoke in support of sprinklers being added to the MRC and we had 11 from the electrical industry that spoke in support of removing the electrical requirements from the MRC and reference the Michigan Electrical Code, having only one electrical code in Michigan. Bert Gale, Gerry O’Connor, David Williams, Joel Tobias, Paul Waug, Doug Scott, John Stoudt, Paul Kaiser, Beau Burton, Chris Cleveland, and Evan Detone.

The hearing only lasted about 45 minutes and people were able to send email comments to the bureau until 5:00 pm. We are not sure when the full Hearing report and a list of all comments will be available.

Paul Kaiser, Square D, had a demonstration of an AFCI breaker vs a standard thermal magnetic breaker.  

Thank you to everyone that either attended the hearing, spoke in support of only one electrical code in Michigan and to those that sent in comments.