AMY PAULIN IN THE NEWS

Sunday, July 26, 2009
Loophole Lets Camps Avoid Regulation

The Journal News

By Cara Matthews

ALBANY - Camp directors and public-health officials across the state are urging the governor to sign legislation that would expand summer day camp inspections to include those held indoors.

The bill's proponents say there are potentially a few hundred children's camps that are run for the most part inside, ranging from computer training and theater to gymnastics and circus tricks. They don't have to go through a rigorous permitting and inspection process, meet set counselor-to-camper staffing ratios, obtain background checks on camp directors for reported child-abuse incidents, or comply with other requirements outdoor camps have to meet.

"When a parent sends their child to camp, they assume that the camp has been inspected, that it meets Department of Health regulations and that their children are safe," said Gene DeSantis, a spokesman for the state Camp Directors Association. "And unfortunately, with day camps that are primarily indoors, there's a gaping loophole in the law, and parents don't know it."

The camps are uninspected and unregulated under any common entity, he said.

When the current law was written several decades ago, it was not contemplated that summer day camps would be indoors, DeSantis said. That's how the loophole came into being.

Camps have tried to avoid regulation by setting up programs in which more than half of the activities are inside, according to the bill's sponsors, Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, D-Scarsdale, Westchester County, and Suzi Oppenheimer, D-Mamaroneck, Westchester County.