The Alarm Industry Communications Committee (AICC), organized as a subcommittee of the Central Station Alarm Association (CSAA) unanimously voted to move forward with the extensively deliberated initiative creating a nationally recognized monitoring license.
AICC formed a subcommittee that will focus its energy on central monitoring companies engaged in interstate commerce, a particular portion of the industry that appears to have been an afterthought in otherwise well-developed state and local legislature. The subcommittee is co-chaired by Jim McMullen, president of C.O.P.S. Monitoring, Williamstown, N.J., and Bill Cooper, ADT Security Services’ industry liaison manager, Louisville, Ky.
“This project has been a long standing goal of CSAA, and now the intense interest generated as a result of the recent New York licensing issue has brought it to the surface,” said Ed Bonifas, president of CSAA and vice president at Alarm Detection Systems in Aurora, Ill.
National monitoring companies encounter strenuous compliance requirements such as obligating company qualifiers to travel to numerous states to take licensing tests often devoid of any monitoring-related materials and mandates. They also require that companies provide duplicate criminal background checks and fingerprinting for employees in states many miles away from their home states. While these rules, regulations, statues, and policies have been well developed to help protect both consumers and businesses, the AICC believes they do little if anything to address alarm monitoring directly as many of the monitoring regulations are piggybacked or attached as part of other legislation that often governs other industries such as electricians and private security guards.
In response to these and other licensing impediments, the AICC subcommittee intends to introduce a bill in Congress that would create a “National Monitoring License” permitting companies to monitor across state lines.
AICC is calling upon the experience and expertise of national monitoring companies and other industry professionals to provide input in its draft bill that details the criteria or requirements of a “Nationally Recognized Monitoring Company.” The AICC has established a web site located at http://alarminfo.net/aicc/ that contains the first draft of the proposed bill along with an online form to collect the input from various sources. The AICC will be accepting input until the close of business on May 13, 2011. -- Deborah O'Mara, editor, SD&I magazine
