Oregon certification deadline at hand

July 31, 2003 PORTLAND, Ore. - The state of Oregon has set Thursday as the deadline for out-of-state monitoring companies to meet its certification standards. In May, the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training notified executive managers of all companies with operations in the state that they would be required to have a state of Oregon certified alarm monitor instructor provide training to meet its certification standard. For large national companies like Network Multifamily Corp. of Irving, Texas, getting employees certified in several different states can be costly. That was one reason the company went to great lengths to ensure that it met the Oregon requirement as cost-effectively as possible. According to Ann Chaffin, training coordinator for Network Multifamily, the company flew an Oregon DPSST instructor in to Irving on Tuesday to certify several of the company’s employees. The reasoning behind the decision, Chaffin said, was purely economical. "Had we not put together this class here in Irving, it would have cost us a phenomenal amount of money to fly our people to Oregon to be certified," she said. The number of such state-specific standards – in addition to the cost of meeting them – has gotten out of hand, Chaffin said. Eight other states – New York, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, North Carolina and Louisiana – require similar certifications. "Every time we turn around, there’s something different coming out to charge the alarm companies money for having even one apartment complex within a state that they monitor," Chaffin said. For more on the burden that state certifications place on companies, see the August issue of Security Systems News.