ExpressNews: TRCC reveals its plan to close down
The agency that oversees home building in Texas will be dismantled over the next 14 months ... l Aug. 31... the agency starts a yearlong wind down of its operations. The Sunset Advisory Commission staff last year recommended abolishing the agency, in part because of the inability of the agency to force builders to repair shoddy construction work. Homeowners were forced to go through the agency before going to court, but didn't trust it, the staff report said. "No other regulatory agency has a program with such a potentially devastating effect on consumers' ability to seek their own remedies," it said.In September, Texas reverts to the pre-TRCC law, the Residential Construction Liability Act, which limited damages homeowners could seek and gave builders the right to repair poor construction.

End mapped out for Texas construction agency
The agency that oversees home building in Texas will be dismantled over the next 14 months under a plan announced Friday. But it will be business as usual for builders and homeowners dealing with the Texas Residential Construction Commission until Aug. 31. After that, the agency starts a one-year wind down of its operations. The TRCC is outlining its demise after lawmakers did not act to save the beleaguered agency from the state's "sunset" process.

Why Texas is the deadliest state for construction workers
On Oct. 23, 2006, 19-year-old Omar Puerto was painting trim and preparing to install rain gutters on a three-story apartment building in South Austin. It was his third day on the job. So far, the main challenge had been moving the heavy 40-foot aluminum ladder; he and a fellow worker had struggled with it all three days. Behind the men was a spider's web of electrical wires leading from the apartment building to a 7,200-volt transformer. Federal law requires that workers be trained before working around live wires. The law also says that any exposed wiring must be clearly marked. These wires weren't. And Puerto, according to his family, had gotten no training. Now it was time to coax the 40-foot ladder toward the next section of wall. As Puerto and his partner yanked and pulled, the ladder hit an exposed wire connected to the transformer. The guy on the other end of the ladder took off running. Puerto had so much voltage running through his body that he couldn't release his grip. He died right there.

Mandatory Binding Arbitration - Forced Arbitration - Is Bad For Consumers And Congress Should Act
This week on National Public Radio (NPR) "All Things Considered" highlights new legislation banning pre-dispute mandatory binding arbitration clauses. A recent article posted on Injury Board is a good resource on the subject of forced arbitration and covers the NPR story: NPR Examines "An Arbitration Culture".

Rape Case Highlights Arbitration Debate
Jamie Leigh Jones was a 20-year-old Halliburton employee in 2005 when she was sent to work in Iraq. She'd been there just four days when she joined a small group of Halliburton firefighters outside her barracks at the end of the day. One of them gave her a drink. She took two sips, and Jones says that was the last thing she remembered...Jones had been raped, repeatedly...Jones has decided that if she can't have her day in criminal court, she'll sue Halliburton and its former subsidiary, KBR, in civil court. "I want corporate accountability," she says.

Iraq Rape Case, Stresses Dire Need for Arbitration Reformt
Halliburton, its subsidiary KBR, and the employees who raped Jones, have faced no criminal or civil consequences for their actions, leaving the physically and emotionally damaged Jones to question if certain corporations are immune from the law.  Halliburton/KBR denies responsibility for Jones' rape, allowed the employees involved to stay on the job after she left Iraq, declined to ensure that the responsible employees faced criminal charges, and now claim they can't be sued in court either, pointing to a mandatory arbitration clause in Jones' employment contract.

Water Restrictions, what's the Impact on Homeowners?
How does this happen? How can we put a man on the moon in 1969, essentially eradicate smallpox, build millions of homes that don't have foundation deficiencies and failures, yet let so many engineers and homebuilders continually plague homeowners with substandard foundations? The answer is simple. Money. Let's follow the money.

Indicted Countrywide Chief Built Second Home in Texas
In 2004 Texas' top leaders awarded $20 million in taxpayer funds to induce Countrywide to expand its Texas workforce. After the troubled company laid off one-fifth of its workforce, Governor Perry now refuses to release the compliance reports that Countrywide files to verify if it is has met the jobs requirements of its state grant.  Read more: Lobby Watch at TPJ.

Citing e-mail messages in which Mr. Mozilo referred to Countrywide loan products as "toxic" and  "poison," S.E.C. officials said that he had misled investors about growing risks in the company's lending practices from 2005 through 2007. During this time he also generated $140 million in profits by selling stock in the company, the S.E.C. said.  "This is the tale of two companies," said Robert Khuzami, enforcement director at the S.E.C. "Countrywide portrayed itself as underwriting mainly prime-quality mortgages, using high underwriting standards. But concealed from shareholders was the true Countrywide, an increasingly reckless lender assuming greater and greater risk." At a news conference announcing its filing of the suit, the most prominent against an executive involved in the mortgage crisis, Mr. Khuzami said the S.E.C. had made it a priority "to pursue cases at the root of the financial crisis." As the nation's largest mortgage lender, Countrywide helped fuel the housing boom by offering loans to high-risk borrowers. See Related Feature: Rise and Fall of Predatory Lending and Housing

TRCC dies, leaving questions
The often-criticized agency that oversees home building in Texas will be dismantled.As the legislative session wound down this week, lawmakers did not act to save the beleaguered Texas Residential Construction Commission from the state's Sunset process. Now the decision "€” which many say is unlikely to be reversed in a special session "€” has consumer advocates, builders' groups, attorneys and even agency officials themselves scratching their heads over how the agency's death will occur... Alex Winslow:  "We got the agency out of the way and now can start with a fresh slate in the next session," he said. "We can create a process or agency so that builders are held accountable and homes are built right the first time. The TRCC never really served those goals," he said.

The Arbitration Fairness Act Gets Support From NASAA
The North American Securities Administrators Association, NASAA, announced last week that it fully supports the Arbitration Fairness Act, which makes forced arbitration unenforceable. The Arbitration Fairness Act currently making its way through Congress, which will make binding arbitration agreements before an actual disagreement occurs unenforceable, has been given a boost by being endorsed by an organization of state securities regulators. The North American Securities Administrators Association, NASAA, announced last week that it fully supports the legislation, introduced as S. 931 by Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) and H.R. 1020 by Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA).

Zombie zones - Stalled housing sites litter local landscape
Tucked into the far backwoods of Brunswick County, the Villages at Goose Marsh once planned to house almost 800 families. Now it's a desolate, lonely community of one. The story is similar throughout Brunswick County, especially in the N.C. 211 corridor. Dozens of planned developments slowed or stalled when the economy took a nose dive, leaving them in a zombie state: not quite dead, but nowhere close to finished. While there are some signs of life, the county's property market remains shaky at best.

Homebuilder watchdog agency could close next year
The Texas Residential Construction Commission appears to be doomed. The agency was supposed to be a way for thousands of Texas homeowners to get their complaints against builders resolved. Instead, many homeowners felt they were being regulated instead of the builders. View Video Report

The Examiner: Timely Demise
TRCC is currently at death's door in Austin as lawmakers in the Senate showed little appetite for extending the life of the controversial organization created by the legislature in 2003 at the behest of Bob Perry and other home builders...A significant contributing factor in TRCC's demise was the persistent testimony of homeowners who ran into serious problems after they had purchased new homes, only to find that TRCC consistently took the side of the builders over the buyers... Two women from Southeast Texas - Marcia Kushner of Jersey Village and Dorina Corrente of Sugarland - became regular visitors to the state capitol in Austin over a period of years to tell their horror stories about the builders they believe hid behind the TRCC to avoid fixing the defects that plagued their not-inexpensive new houses...Corrente in particular was singled out for harsh treatment, first from homebuilder D.R. Horton and most egregiously by Duane Waddill, executive director of TRCC. When she testified at a hearing in Austin before the House Building and Industry Committee on March 23 of this year about her on-going struggle with the homebuilder, Waddill sought to dismiss her complaints and assailed her credibility by suggesting from the. podium that she was mentally unstable and that D.R. Horton had to obtain "a restraining order against Mrs. Corrente to keep her off their property."...the charge he leveled against Corrente was a lie.

Homeowner: TRCC solves builder's problems, not consumer issues
"The builders never come back to do the work. For five and a half years I've been going through hell," said Dorina Corrente, homeowner. Corrente says for the last five and a half years, she's had cracking walls, windows and floors. She also has a problem with mold. "The doctor forbids me to stay in this house because of the mold," Corrente said. She claims she should have had some recourse through the Texas Residential Construction Commission (TRCC), but has not got the help she needed.