sanitary inspections;
public; semipublic buildings
SB 1062 relieves the Department of Health Services (DHS) of its statutory requirement to inspect public and semipublic buildings for sanitary conditions.
This bill is the result of an audit performed by the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) in 1998 on the Bureau of Epidemiology and Disease Control Services, within of the Department of Health Services (DHS) Public Health. According to the OAG, "although statute requires inspections of all public or semipublic buildings to ensure sanitary conditions, the Office conducts no inspections of public buildings," and "the Bureau needs to assess the relative importance to public health of each of its activities and identify those that could be discontinued, delegated or transferred to other agencies." Currently local health departments have the authority to prescribe conditions for and inspect semipublic buildings, so the requirement for DHS to do the same would seem to be a duplication of services.