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Boston Fire Officials Tell Legislature Local Chiefs Should Enforce State Fire Code on State Properties
Summary
Boston fire officials and lawmakers urged the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security to give local fire chiefs authority to enforce the state fire code at state‑owned buildings, saying current gaps create safety risks and inconsistent standards across the Commonwealth.
Boston Fire Department officials told the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security on Oct. 11 that local fire departments should be allowed to enforce the state fire code in state‑owned buildings.
"When I learned the state properties were not under any obligation to comply with state fire code, I was shocked," Pat Ellis, chief of operations for the Boston Fire Department, told the committee while urging a favorable report on House Bill 2577, which would close what supporters described as a decades‑old loophole.
Ellis said the current arrangement leaves state agencies to regulate their own facilities without routine local oversight, creating inconsistent life‑safety outcomes. "It makes no sense that the local fire officials that routinely respond to medical and fire emergencies in the properties... do not have the ability to enforce" state minimum standards, he said, arguing that local plans reviewers often see recommendations ignored by state projects.
Testimony listed examples of wide variation in the condition of state buildings — "from state‑of‑the‑art high‑rise properties down to properties built in the century," Ellis said — and recounted incidents in which life‑safety systems had fallen into disrepair. He cited a campus where standpipe and sprinkler systems froze about 14 months earlier, leaving students at risk, and said state building inspectors have heavy workloads and are not authorized to enforce nuances of the state fire code.
Ellis urged the committee to give local chiefs authority to abate dangerous conditions in state buildings and to standardize protection across all properties. He said the bill would allow local officials to address hazardous material storage, life‑safety system maintenance and other violations that currently may go uncorrected.
Committee members did not take votes at the hearing. The Boston Fire Department and its fire‑safety allies asked lawmakers to approve the bill, and Ellis said several state fire marshals and municipal leaders are aligned in support.
Why it matters: Testimony framed the issue as one of uniform public safety across communities and suggested that allowing local enforcement would reduce the chance that dangerous conditions in state properties go unaddressed. The bill would alter the division of enforcement authority between state inspectors and municipal fire jurisdictions.
