Make the sprinkler law work

WHEN THE Legislature voted in 2004 to require sprinklers at many bars and nightclubs, it had ample reason. A fire the previous year at the Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., had sent 100 people to gruesome deaths. A functioning sprinkler system almost surely would have spared most or all of them. For that reason, lawmakers required Massachusetts nightspots with a capacity of 100 or more to install sprinklers by November of this year.

Still, some bars and nightclubs have been slow to meet the new requirement or have tried to exploit loopholes in the law. In Boston alone, local fire officials determined that 229 establishments were covered by the law, but, as the Globe reported recently, fewer than half have submitted compliance plans.

The law is a boon to public safety and needs to be enforced. But lawmakers should also recognize that the sprinkler mandate can cost a bar owner tens of thousands of dollars or more. The state should do more to help them manage that burden.

The task force that studied the fire code and recommended changes to the Legislature didn't just seek to impose a new mandate; from the beginning, state Fire Marshal Stephen D. Coan said in an interview, the panel also wanted to avoid "long-term adverse effects" to entertainment venues, and it recommended ways to do so.

For instance, the fire safety law as enacted allows business owners to depreciate the cost of a sprinkler system over five years instead of 39. This measure, which Coan's panel recommended, represents a significant tax break. But the panel floated other ideas, such as tax credits and cheap loans, that never went anywhere. The Legislature didn't pass any tax credits. Lawmakers did direct the state's economic development office to come up with a plan for low- and no-interest loans by June 2005. But the office never complied.

Wyndham Lewis, chief of staff to former economic development chief Ranch Kimball, said the Legislature never set aside any money to pay for the development of a plan, so the economic affairs office never presented one. But as state Senator Stephen Brewer, who helped craft the law, points out, the legislation isn't ambiguous. "They have not done it," Brewer said, "and shame on them."

Coan maintains that, except in cases of terrorism, no fire that killed more than two people has ever occurred in a building outfitted with sprinklers. Modifying the sprinkler requirement now would be unwise -- and unfair to the venues that have gone to the expense to meet the sprinkler mandate.

State fire officials have shown a willingness to work with bar owners, and the Automatic Sprinkler Appeals Board has used common sense in decisions about which venues should be covered by the law. Even so, the burden on smaller bars and nightclubs is heavier than it needs to be. There's still time for the Legislature to offer more help.