Home Builders Association: Local PAC continues support of home-building industry

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Since its inception in 2001, the Coalition for Building a Better Tomorrow the political action committee of the Home Builders Association of Greater Springfield has raised nearly $200,000, according to HBA Executive Director Matt Morrow.|ret||ret||tab|

Morrow said that amount is very encouraging. |ret||ret||tab|

"The truth is, from what we hear from others, it generally takes a long time to build a political organization to the point that it is able to generate that kind of revenue. And what it means is that we have options available to us that a lot of political committees don't have," he said.|ret||ret||tab|

Funding for the PAC comes from member support and an annual golf tournament, Morrow said. |ret||ret||tab|

"There's an opportunity that people have when they renew their (HBA) dues to make a voluntary $50 contribution," Morrow said. "In addition to that, we do a couple of mailings a year, describing what the coalition has been doing, what some of the issues have been that have been important to our industry, and urging their support, and we get a pretty good response from that."|ret||ret||tab|

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Promoting smart growth|ret||ret||tab|

The PAC's function is to promote smart-growth strategies in the political arena in order to keep homes in the Springfield area affordably priced.|ret||ret||tab|

"The people who we elect, I believe, by and large work hard to do a good job. But they also hold a lot of authority over the rules of the game, as it were, for the building industry. If those rules are controlled without our input, it can become very difficult and it has become very difficult in some parts of the country to make a living as a home builder," Morrow said. |ret||ret||tab|

However, Morrow hopes that others besides those in the HBA membership recognize the importance of the PAC and its efforts to support issues and candidates in relation to smart growth.|ret||ret||tab|

"The interest of the public ought to be the fact that the reason it's difficult to make a living as a home builder in some places is because some of these rules and regulations have basically priced almost everybody out of the market to where they can't afford to buy new homes," he said. |ret||ret||tab|

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Backing candidates|ret||ret||tab|

As for specifics on what the PAC does, Morrow said, "We make campaign contributions, and then depending on the level of need of the candidate that we're supporting, we can sometimes offer additional support in terms of mailings, or trying to get out the vote ... with our members." |ret||ret||tab|

While the PAC isn't organized in a way that allows it to support candidates at the national level, it can lend its support to candidates at and below the state level. |ret||ret||tab|

"The ones that we have supported have primarily been county and local candidates and state (representative) and state senator candidates," Morrow said. |ret||ret||tab|

Some of the candidates who have received support from the Coalition for Building Better Tomorrows are Norma Champion, Dan Clemens, Mark Wright, Jay Wasson and Dave Coonrod. |ret||ret||tab|

To date, Morrow noted, the PAC's success rate the number of candidates it has supported who have been elected to office is about 93 percent. |ret||ret||tab|

When choosing which candidates to support, Morrow said the PAC first looks at whether that candidate's office is of interest to the home-building industry. |ret||ret||tab|

"If the office meets that criteria, then we invite candidates for that office to come in and meet with our government affairs committee. They interview them, discuss issues that are pertinent to our members, to our industry, get a feel for what their opinions are on those and then they make a recommendation to our CBBT Board of Trustees, which is the PAC board," Morrow said.|ret||ret||tab|

Ed Alden, immediate past president of the HBA and chairman of the CBBT Board of Trustees, added, "We're always looking and visiting with candidates, and people who are looking to the future, because the CBBT's main function is to look at candidates and issues that are pro-growth."|ret||ret||tab|

However, Alden said, not everyone recognizes the importance of growth. |ret||ret||tab|

"There's a lot of people who believe, for whatever reason, put a fence around Springfield, put a fence around Greene County, keep it the way it is Anybody that has any type of economic sense understands that if you stop growth completely and you put that fence around Springfield and Greene County, you stifle the economy, and, obviously, if it's not moving forward and it's not growing, it's going to decline," Alden said. |ret||ret||tab|

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Issues|ret||ret||tab|

Alden also noted that in addition to supporting individual candidates, the PAC also "would be jumping in with both feet" in support of or against specific issues that would affect the home-building industry.|ret||ret||tab|

Locally, he noted, that hasn't happened yet. |ret||ret||tab|

"It just so happens that Greene County and the city of Springfield are great organizations. They understand the need for growth. They understand the need for the economic strength that we support and they also understand that there's got to be smart growth, and we support that," Alden said. "We've just had a really good relationship with both of these (entities)."|ret||ret||tab|

At the state level, according to Morrow, one piece of legislation the HBA's PAC has lobbied in favor of is "the right to cure." |ret||ret||tab|

"It provides a system for homeowners to get repairs made construction defect repairs made to their new homes (and) there's a 30-day waiting period, to where they have to notify their builder of the problems before they sue them. So the builder has a reasonable period of time to try to fix those problems before they end up in court," Morrow said. The HBA began pushing for that issue in the last legislative session, and it will likely continue to do so in the next one, he said.|ret||ret||tab|

"Usually, it's about a three-year process, even if you're successful to get new legislation through that," Morrow said.|ret||ret||tab|

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