Bill Regarding Records in Self-Storage Passes Committee in Maine

Posted on Mar 2, 2010 in Records Management News

03/01/2010

Maine Leg­isla­tive Doc­u­ment 1499, “An Act to Pro­tect Con­fi­den­tial Con­sumer Records in Self-Service Stor­age Facil­i­ties,” has been passed by the Busi­ness Research and Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Com­mit­tee. The Maine Self Stor­age Asso­ci­a­tion (MeSSA) has worked with the state leg­is­la­ture to craft and amend this new bill per­tain­ing to the han­dling of third-party per­sonal records in self-storage.

After a recent review of the bill, the BRED Com­mit­tee asked MeSSA to work with the Bureau of Con­sumer Credit Pro­tec­tion to agree on appro­pri­ate lan­guage for the bill. At the ses­sion on Feb. 9, asso­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Rhonda Hal­lett Pope answered many ques­tions regard­ing self-storage oper­a­tion and leases as well as the association’s stance on the bill. After some sen­a­tors expressed con­cern about the bill, amend­ments were made, after which it passed the com­mit­tee unan­i­mously. MeSSA expects the bill to pass the House and Sen­ate with­out fur­ther debate.

Among the amend­ments made to the bill is that it no longer requires self-storage oper­a­tors to ask cus­tomers if they are stor­ing records via their lease. In addi­tion, when a cus­tomer defaults and the oper­a­tor cuts the lock on the tenant’s unit, the oper­a­tor may inspect the con­tents to check for per­sonal infor­ma­tion with­out lia­bil­ity. If the oper­a­tor believes there to be per­sonal infor­ma­tion con­tained in the unit, he can destroy the infor­ma­tion with­out lia­bil­ity. The oper­a­tor can also ask buy­ers who find per­sonal infor­ma­tion within a unit they have pur­chased to return it to the operator.

http://www.insideselfstorage.com/hotnews/maine-self-storage-records-bill-committee.html

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