City officials view it as a way to enforce the building code and protect residents. Some landlords view it as a way to harass them and as a threat to tenants' privacy.

The city's use of "administrative search warrants" to inspect rental properties has created a several-year conflict between City Hall and some Rochester landlords. And the issue has heated up again this spring.

City officials want to be able get the warrants to inspect properties when landlords won't give them access. A recent city proposal also included circumstances when officials believe there is "credible evidence" that the property is "in violation of any applicable federal, state, county, or city law, ordinance, rule, or regulation." The warrant procedure would also apply to business owners who need licenses permits.

As with a criminal search warrant, the inspectors would have to convince a judge that the inspection is necessary.

The city's Municipal Code requires that apartments and single-family rental properties be inspected to insure that they conform to the city's building code. Inspectors look for faulty or insufficient wiring, proper heating and ventilation, smoke alarms, and similar safety and deterioration problems.

Rental residential properties must be inspected every five years, as well as when the ownership changes. When inspectors find building-code violations, property owners must correct them.

On occasion, landlords have refused to permit the inspections. To gain access, during the Johnson administration the city began asking judges for "administrative search warrants." Some landlords successfully fought the warrants in court.

In March, the Duffy administration submitted a new proposal to establish a procedure for issuing the warrants. A group representing the landlords and other businesses owners - the Coalition of Property Owners and Businesses - immediately rebelled, and Duffy has withdrawn the proposal for further review.

Members of the Coalition have a long list of objections. They say, for instance, that search warrants can be issued only in cases of suspected crime, not for suspected code violations.

"If you read the proposed ordinance, it allows the city to issue search warrants against innocent people, people who are not suspected of any crime," says David Ahl, a city resident and income-property owner. "They can change the language anyway they want. They can dress it up and call it an ‘administrative search warrant' instead of a criminal search warrant, but it is still a warrant to enter your home."

The Duffy administration insists that the warrants are permissible under rulings by both the US Supreme Court and the New York State Court of Appeals.

The landlords also say that the warrants are too broad, that, in effect, they let inspectors go on a fishing expedition. Rather than citing specific suspected violations, they complain, the warrants give inspectors the right to inspect the entire property, looking for any violation of the building code. That, however, is what inspectors do when they inspect a property to determine whether it meets the code and is safe enough to be occupied.

Ahl doesn't deny that, as a landlord, some of his concerns about administrative search warrants have to do with the repair costs that can arise from city inspections. But he says he is more concerned with the potential for abuse of power and infringements on privacy.

The city's legal counsel doesn't agree.

"Most people, I would say 99 percent of the people out there, want us to come in, and we do our inspections with the consent of the owner and the tenants," says Jeffrey Eichner, municipal attorney for the city. "This is about public safety. This is about the inspectors doing their job. We are not looking for something in a desk drawer. That would require a criminal search warrant, and that's not what this is about. The standards are very different for a criminal search warrant."

The landlord critics say that no other city in New York uses administrative search warrants, and Eichner says he is not aware of any other city in the state using them.

"We are probably out in front on this," he says.

Mayor Duffy "wants to modify the language so that everybody understands what these warrants are really used for: code enforcement," says Duffy's spokesperson, Gary Walker. "But they are not the same as criminal search warrants. We're not a bunch of jackbooted thugs coming in the middle of the night, unannounced, and breaking down doors. We're asking to make an appointment to inspect while someone is at home."

The landlord group's goal seems to go beyond preventing the city from using administrative search warrants, however. In an 18-page letter to Mayor Duffy a year ago, written on behalf of the Coalition of Property Owners and Businesses, Ahl said that except in case of safety emergencies or evidence of criminal conduct, the city should inspect the interior of properties only if the owner or a tenant requests it. That would eliminate the city's requirement that rental units be re-inspected periodically for compliance with city codes.

Ahl said this week that continues to be his view.

City spokesperson Gary Walker says the re-inspections are needed for safety reasons, to insure continued code compliance.

Ahl says petitions opposing the administrative search warrants will be presented to City Council at its May meeting.