Can Surfside condo collapse bring reforms? State, local group to consider new laws

A group of local, state and federal officeholders plan to explore improvements to building-safety regulations after the condominium collapse in Surfside, county Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said this week.

“After Hurricane Andrew, there was countywide agreement that we needed to strengthen the building code,” Levine Cava said in an interview released Wednesday with Monica Richardson, executive editor of the Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald and Bradenton Herald. “Going forward, I hope we can do the same.”

Later in the day, Levine Cava’s office released a list of 31 officeholders who will discuss policy reforms.

The group includes all congressional members from Miami-Dade, including senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, a mix of Republican and Democratic members of the county’s legislative delegation in Tallahassee, and 12 city mayors, including Miami’s Francis Suarez, Surfside’s Charles Burkett and Hialeah’s Carlos Hernández.

Levine Cava will serve as co-chair with Jose “Pepe” Diaz, chairman of the Miami-Dade County Commission, and the group plans its first public meeting Aug. 30.

Levine Cava told Richardson the group will explore changes needed in regulations and laws governing building safety, condominium management and other topics tied to the Surfside collapse.

Topics include qualifications for who can perform county-mandated building inspections, cash reserve requirements for condominium associations and how much notice to give property owners that they’re due for Miami-Dade’s required 40-year recertification.

“We want to make sure we have a continuum of protection. Some things are reserved for the state; they’ve preempted us. What can we do at the state level? What we can do locally? What things can we do without legislative changes?” Levine Cava said in the interview. “We really need to work together.”

Florida law prevents local governments from imposing regulations on condominium associations, leaving the Republican-controlled Legislature in charge of that category of potential post-Surfside reforms.

Levine Cava, a Democrat in a non-partisan post, oversees the county agency that conducts building inspections. The county commission can also change the Miami-Dade building code and tighten rules governing the mandated recertification process for older structures.

This is the third panel announced by Miami-Dade leaders after the June 24 partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South complex, which killed 98 people. Levine Cava said on June 30 she would convene a group of experts on building safety, geology, condominium law and other fields as part of her administration’s effort to propose reforms to prevent another similar catastrophe.

A Levine Cava spokesperson said Wednesday that group of experts will meet with the mayor sometime this month. Levine Cava said the group has already been advising her administration’s Building Department on potential changes.

Raquel Regalado, a county commissioner, also will lead a subcommittee announced by Diaz to study the Surfside collapse and propose potential reforms. She said her group will take testimony from experts over a series of meetings. “We’ll take action on the report and pass it on to this working group and the board of county commissioners,” Regalado said.

In the interview, Levine Cava said Miami-Dade didn’t need an independent task force to study building reforms after Surfside.

“We have so many different groups,” she said, pointing to task forces formed by state lawyer and engineer associations. “Many, many are looking, obviously, to try and fix this for our future.”