HOUSE DOCKET, NO. 1306        FILED ON: 1/13/2009

HOUSE  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  No. 442

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts

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In the Year Two Thousand Nine

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An Act relative to school safety..

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:
 

SECTION 1. Chapter 70B of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2006 Official Edition, is hereby amended by adding at the end thereof the following new section:--

Section 20. Whenever the authority approves an application for funding of a school project under this chapter, the authority shall require that, as a condition of the full disbursement of such funding, the city, town or joint committee responsible for such project shall submit printed and electronic copies of the design plan for the project as it is built to the executive director of the authority and to the chiefs of the fire department and the police department having jurisdiction over the city or town in which the project is located. Such plans shall be submitted to the authority in a format to be determined by the executive director of the authority.

The executive director shall enter into an agreement with the department of state police to develop and maintain a central registry of plans which are received and kept on file by the authority under the preceding paragraph, whereby the state police shall be able to access electronic copies of design plans for school projects in the event of an emergency. Such agreement shall contain appropriate safeguards to ensure that design plans archived within the registry are not accessible by members of the general public.

Design plans submitted to the authority under this section shall not be public records under the twenty-sixth clause of section 7 of chapter 4 of the General Laws; provided, that this section shall not prevent or otherwise limit the disclosure of design plans and other documents which are otherwise within the custody or control of the authority.

SECTION 2. The executive director of the Massachusetts school building authority shall issue an annual report to the chairs of the house and senate committees on ways and means, the house and senate chairs of the joint committee on bonding, capital expenditures and state assets, and the house and senate chairs of the joint committee on education, which shall identify the school projects for which plans have been received by the authority under section 20 of chapter 70B of the general laws during the preceding year and the cost associated with archiving plans in the central registry required by that section. Such reports shall be issued by the executive director of the authority not later than December 31 of each year. The first such report issued by the executive director under this section also shall contain an analysis as to the feasibility and projected cost of incorporating all design plans of school facilities which are studied, inventoried or audited by the authority in the course of its business within such central registry.