The proposal was straightforward. Rentals must be habitable in summer as well as winter. There is a floor on how cold a landlord may let a unit get. There is no ceiling. The proposal put one in.

It was raised at the top of the second hour, described in about ninety seconds, and disposed of by the six minutes past.

The objection came quickly and it was not unreasonable. A maximum-temperature standard would in practice be met by air conditioning. Air conditioning draws power. The group has spent four years asking the public to draw less. A member observed that it would be difficult to advocate for a rule whose compliance mechanism is a machine the group has elsewhere asked people to run less often, and several members agreed, and one added that the optics of it would be used against them.

Nobody in the room said anything untrue.

The chair asked whether there was support for taking it up. There was not. The item was recorded as not advanced and the group moved to the next matter, which concerned permitting timelines and ran forty minutes.

This paper has reviewed what was asked in those four minutes and reports the following.

No member asked what temperature the standard would set.

No member asked whether it would apply to all rentals or only to units above a certain size, or only to buildings above a certain age, or only where a landlord already controls the system.

No member asked what it would cost, either to a landlord or to the state.

No member asked how many households currently live above whatever line was being proposed, which is a number that exists.

No member asked whether the compliance mechanism had to be an air conditioner. Shading, glazing, ventilation, insulation and heat pumps were not raised. A heat pump is the same appliance the group has spent two years promoting, run in the other direction, and it did not come up.

No member asked who dies of indoor heat, which is also a number that exists, and which does not distribute evenly across the housing stock.

The group did not vote the proposal down. Voting it down would have required a position on it. It was allowed not to advance, which is a different thing and takes less time.

This paper wishes to be careful here, because the temptation is to describe a room full of people who do not care, and that is not what the record shows. Every member present has spent years on this. Several have spent them at personal cost. On the larger question they are correct and they have been correct in public when it was expensive to be.

What the record shows is narrower and worse. It shows a proposal arriving with the wrong shape for the frame, and a room that recognised the shape immediately and therefore never had to look inside it. The objection was available in ninety seconds. The questions would have taken an hour. The group is not obliged to spend the hour and did not.

We have no reform to propose. This is not a story about a rule that should have passed. It is possible the proposal was bad and would have failed on the merits.

It never reached the merits. It was answered at the level of what it resembled, by people who were not curious enough to find out whether the resemblance held, and it was gone before the coffee came back.

Questioning Everything was hired by Eleffant Investments and covers whatever it is given.