The bill would require auto manufacturers to provide access to their diagnostic repair system through either a tool or a computer system contained in the vehicle.
By MATT MURPHY
BOSTON — The Senate on Thursday night passed a controversial auto repair bill after weeks of negotiations between manufacturers and independent auto repairers in an attempt to settle the issue before it goes before voters in the form a ballot question in November.
The bill was approved quickly with little debate Thursday night as senators took a brief break from their discussion of a health care cost containment bill to pass the bill on a voice vote. Only after the vote did the bill’s author, Sen. Thomas Kennedy, and Sen. Jack Hart discuss the substance of the proposal.
“This is a consumer bill, because now they’ll have a choice,” said Hart, a Boston Democrat.
The bill now moves to the House where there has been less buzz about reaching a legislative compromise to head off the ballot question. When a joint House and Senate committee handling a similar bill failed to reach a compromise by the reporting deadline, the Senate Ways and Means Committee drafted its own version.
After the bill’s passage was delayed several weeks in the Senate to allow stakeholders to continue negotiations, Kennedy offered a substitute draft on Thursday night, crediting “the fact that the clock was ticking and the ballot hanging over head” with helping to reach a compromise, though not all parties were pleased with the result.
While supporters contend that the bill would protect consumers by giving independent repairers access to the same information as dealerships to repair vehicles, opponents claim repair shops can already access the data they need and have branded the bill a power grab by after-market parts manufacturers to seize proprietary information.
Kennedy, a Brockton Democrat and co-chairman of the Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure, said, “I think this is the best scenario we could envision.”
Starting on Jan. 1, 2016, the bill would require manufacturers to provide access to their diagnostic repair system through either a tool or a computer system contained in the vehicle. Hart and Kennedy said the bill would give dealers and independent repairers the same ability to purchase the information at a “fair market value.”
“We shouldn’t call them cars anymore, really. We should call them computers with wheels,” Hart said by way of explanation of the need for local repair shops in neighborhoods like the ones he represents in South Boston.
When Sen. Robert Hedlund (R-Weymouth) raised a concern that truck and motorcycle repair shops ought to have the same access, Kennedy explained that trucks under 10,000 pounds are included in the bill, while heavier vehicles lack the same computer interface.
Kennedy said the bill also guards against dealerships having to release “precious trade secrets to leak out to China and undermine our workers in America.”
The so-called Right-to-Repair bill has been one of the most heavily lobbied pieces on legislation on Beacon Hill, and Massachusetts would be the first state in the country to adopt a version of the bill that has been pushed across the country and in Congress.
“The light is at the end of the tunnel for consumers,” said Art Kinsman, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Right to Repair Coalition.
With the bill facing an uncertain future in the House, Kinsman said the coalition will continue to collect the required signatures required by July 3 to put a question on the ballot in November.
The Alliance of Automobile Manufactures blasted the development in the Senate. “Passing legislation that damages one business to benefit another is bad public policy,” the Alliance said in a statement.
“Innovation is at the heart of the Massachusetts economy, and it's shocking that the Senate would pass legislation that freezes innovation and threatens intellectual property. Even more, it fails to save consumers any money as confirmed by the bill's own proponents at a State House hearing on the matter,” the statement continued.
According to the Secretary of State's office, at least 22 individuals, lobbying firms and interest groups are involved in lobbying on the issue, including unions, car manufacturers, and business organizations. Former House Speaker Thomas Finneran is lobbying for the bill on behalf of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and former Senate President Robert Travaglini is pressing the plan on behalf of the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association.