Colorado Roofing Association's October President's Message

Jeff Johnston of The Roofing Company and current CRA President shares updates about the association's Government Relations efforts. 

Well it's September and summer was a mere blur in my foggy memory.  September is the real start of roofing season for us and most roofers in this state.  The general contractors are behind because their earlier sub-contractors didn’t stay on schedule so the later sub-contractors including their roofers need to make that time up.  The homeowners are no better; they start calling and yelling because they waited until the last minute to get their roofs repaired or re-roofed.  Does this sound familiar?  Fall is not my favorite time of year because it is a mad rush to the finish line called WINTER! 

On to my monthly roofing topic.  CRA has a Government Relations Committee which I Chair along with Danielle Maya who is with Cotney Construction Law and Debbie Hathorne our Executive Director.  A few years ago, the Colorado Contractors Coalition was formed and CRA was invited to partner with several other associations in order to protect and advocate for roofers and other subcontractors as a united group.  Our mission is to track legislation throughout the state of Colorado and either support or challenge any legislation that either helps our members or hurts our industry. This group generally meets once a month.   Coalition members include: American Subcontractor Association of Colorado (ASAC), Colorado Roofing Association (CRA), National Utility Contractors Association-Colorado Chapter (NUCA) and the Rocky Mountain Steel Construction Association (RMSCA).  In addition to these coalition members, our group has worked closely with contractors from both the drywall and surety industries as well as communication/collaboration with larger association such as ABC, AGC, HBA, and the Building Jobs4Colorado Coalition (BJ4C) as necessary.

In addition to tracking bills each legislative session, our group has also drafted legislation, worked with key stakeholders, acquired bill sponsors and worked together to get our legislation passed with the help of our shared lobbyist.  This is a daunting task which generally takes a full year or more to get accomplished.  Our most recent legislation, SB19-138, was to mandate that all P-3 projects in this state have bonding requirements for all parties.  The legislation was defeated two years ago, but we continued to persevere and were successful in getting SB19-138 passed this last legislative session. It was signed by Governor Polis in April and went into effect in August. This is a great achievement for our coalition and will protect all subcontractors working on P-3 projects.  

Moving forward, our coalition is currently discussing retainage legislation. It is something we have tried for in the past and would like to see changed.  Our ideal goal would be to have retainage in the private sector hold 5% retainage on all work through a project.  This would be a big savior for all sub-contractors and brings me to my final request. This process not only takes time and effort by coalition members, but also entails money!  Funding is needed for a lobbyist, legislators and industry communication as well as participation and/or membership fees in other industry coalitions, organizations and legislative events.

Each year, our group hosts one or two joint fundraising events. On November 21, we are having a Top Golf Fundraiser at the new Thornton location.  I’m asking our CRA members to please attend.  This fundraiser needs to be successful in raising funds.  The proceeds from this will go to the Colorado Contractors Coalition to help fund legislative efforts for this year.  If we get the funding raised and are successful, we hope to help our members ‘get their money out of their projects’ quickly and efficiently.

Registration for the Top Golf Fundraising event is already open.  Sign up here.

Thanks for all your help in supporting our efforts to protect and advocate for roofers! 

Contact Jeff

Original article source: Colorado Roofing Association