This is specific to my town, if I lived across the street in a different town I wouldn't need to. Unfortunately I didn't know this detail until after I bought the house.
Typically, when this happens and it's a local law like this it's because something really bad happened in the past.
I know, for example, the town of Cripple Creek, CO requires all their buildings to be made out of bricks. Pretty annoying. But it's because the entire town burned down twice in the 19th century.
So, maybe, someone in the past killed a bunch of people with bad electrical work.
