California Building Standards Commission: appeals: code equivalence determinations.

(1) Existing law authorizes any person adversely affected by any regulation, rules, omission, interpretation, decision, or practice of any state agency respecting the administration of any building standard to appeal the issue for resolution to the California Building Standards Commission. Existing law authorizes any local agency having authority to enforce a state building standard and any person adversely affected by any regulation, rule, omission, interpretation, decision, or practice of that agency respecting that building standard to appeal to the commission, provided that both wish to appeal the issue for resolution to the commission. Existing law authorizes the commission to accept those appeals only if the commission determines that the issues involved in the appeal have statewide significance. This bill would revise and recast those provisions to expand the reasons for which a person can appeal to the commission to include, among other things, being adversely affected by any building standard or local amendment to a building standard or any reasonable interpretation of the California Building Standards Code. The bill would expand the conditions under which the commission may accept an appeal by removing the requirement that both the local agency and the adversely affected person wish to appeal the issue, and by revising the required statewide significance determination of the commission to instead only require that statewide significance to be potential, as provided. The bill would also authorize the commission to decline to accept an appeal if the commission determines that the issues raised are primarily local in nature, lack current or potential statewide significance, or do not materially affect housing delivery or adaptive reuse. (2) Existing law requires certain building regulations to permit the use of alternate materials, appliances, installations, devices, arrangements, or methods of construction if they are, for the purposes intended, at least t