Those struggling to pay mortgages on new houses should not also have to pay twice for negligence of their home builders. The Legislature ought to extend warranty protections to home buyers.

Yet a home builders’ lobby that has been begging for billions in Washington, D.C., to mitigate a mortgage crisis that its own lobbying helped create has worked successfully in Olympia to deny consumer protections to mortgage-paying taxpayers it wants to hit up.

In Olympia, public-supported efforts to provide consumers’ remedies for construction defects in new homes or renovations have passed the Senate – and House committees – in three of the past four legislative sessions, only to fail in House floor votes after opposition from the home builders’ lobby.

Last year’s consumer protection effort would have simply guaranteed the same statutory warranty rights to single-family home buyers and renovators that buyers of new condominiums enjoy.

Under state law, new condos are protected against significant defects for four years after construction. In sharp contrast, the first owners of new single-family homes are merely entitled to an “implied warranty of habitability” – protecting only against structural defects so severe they make the home completely uninhabitable.

In other words, state law requires builders of single-family homes to fix mistakes only if a new home immediately collapses on its first occupants. And even this minimal “protection” is often waived by deceptive warranties supplied by builders.

I have great difficulty explaining to my district’s home-buying families – particularly Lacey’s many military families – why state law treats them as second-class citizens compared to those buying upscale condominiums on the Eastside or in downtown Seattle.

It’s far easier to just point to where political power resides.

By not granting substantive rights to homeowners, our state has fallen behind others. Remarkably, even such traditionally Republican states as Indiana, Louisiana, Nevada and Texas provide statutory warranty rights to homeowners.

It’s inexplicable that Washington, with large Democratic legislative majorities, cannot be at least as progressive as Louisiana when it comes to protecting consumers.

The building industry and some legislators in its thrall suggest that consumer education can substitute for actually protecting consumers from their home builders’ mistakes. This is not unlike suggesting that prosecutors, rather than prosecute crimes, should simply educate people on avoiding becoming crime victims.

Surely all crime would then disappear as readily as builder negligence, right?

The irony of a home builder bailout would be as rich as some of the builders seeking your tax dollars. The Laborers Union, for example, notes that enormous corporate home builders who pushed risky subprime loans through their mortgage subsidiaries stand to rake in billions on top of their huge earlier profits. The nation’s largest homebuilder – D.R. Horton, which actively builds subdivisions in my district – alone would gain a projected $607 million.

Residential construction is a vital part of the state’s economy, and the state’s last economic forecast assumes construction employment will decline by about 12 percent through early 2010 from its late 2007 peak – with plunging consumer confidence, job losses, and tighter lending standards depressing home sales despite low interest rates.

It’s not unreasonable for government to assist in revitalizing this economic sector – but it should not do so unconditionally.

After all, when times were good for home builders, their lobbying opposed making life easier for their customers. I recall when the Wheatleys, a family of five from Vancouver, found their new home plagued with toxic mold and leaks and were offered $35,000 by their builder toward $100,000 in costs.

They wrote me to say, “It looks as though our boat is about to sink. … We will end up with nothing but accrued debt for all the medical bills and belongings we had to discard.”

I’ve reintroduced homeowners’ rights legislation for the coming session. In rebuilding our economy, let’s not replicate the mistakes of the past and forget the consumers, like the Wheatley family, who are at the heart of it.

Brendan Williams of Olympia represents the 22nd Legislative District in the state House of Represenatives.