Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510230060
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Gov. George Allen says it makes sense for car dealers to police themselves - just as doctors, lawyers and other professional and business groups do now.
That's why, Allen says, he pushed this year to turn power for regulating the auto industry over to a new board controlled by car dealers.
State Sen. Kenneth Stolle - a Virginia Beach Republican who carried the dealer-board bill for Allen in the Senate - agrees the private sector should regulate itself.
As a lawyer, Stolle says, "I want to hold all of my competitors to a high standard - to make sure I'm not thought of in a low form. I think the automobile dealers want to do the same thing."
Del. George Grayson, D-Williamsburg, says that's not a fair comparison. Lawyers and physicians have written codes of ethics and must get years of special training. To get a license as a car-sales person, he says, you must complete an open-book test.
Some critics say even self-regulating doctors and lawyers boards aren't always tough enough on their own. This year, a College of William and Mary researcher's survey found 53 percent of citizens who had filed complaints against lawyers rated the State Bar's performance as "poor" or "very poor."
Grayson would like to see more voices of consumers and average citizens on state boards. The state's lawyer discipline boards include no nonlawyers. Other regulatory boards typically have two or three citizen members who don't represent the group that's being regulated.
The car-dealers board has 16 auto industry members, two state officials and one consumer representative. The Allen administration's original bill included no consumer slot, but one was added by the General Assembly.
Critics predict the board will operate more as a trade group than as a citizens board. Julie Lapham, director of the advocacy group Common Cause Virginia, says the idea that only members of an industry know enough about their business to police themselves smacks of "feudalism." It suggests average folks can't be trusted - "that no consumer has the wherewithal, or the education, or the ooomph to make those decisions."
Allen doesn't see the point in having more consumers on the board: "I'd like to hear a rationale for it other than imputing that because this person is in business they are inherently a scoundrel. There are those with that mindset. They look upon those who are employers and people who are in business as if they're bad people."
Lapham says asking for a bigger voice for consumers isn't the same as saying business people are bad. Even with the best of intentions, she says, "we all have agendas" and "business people inherently have business as their first order of business. The citizen gets relegated to the back burner."
Allen believes car dealers will do a good job of sticking up for their customers. Even if consumer advocates got a second consumer slot on board, Allen says, "they'd probably be complaining that 'Oh Gosh, you should have three on there.'"
"I can't imagine making a big issue out of that," Allen says. "I don't think it's that big an issue."
by CNB