The Rhode Island Legislature has introduced a series of Right to Repair bills recently, with two of them already scheduled for hearings. The House Corporations Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday, February 11, to hear HB 5159 and HB 5246. The first bill is specific to agricultural equipment, while the second is a broad-based bill that would include agricultural equipment due to its broad definition of “digital electronics.”
Both bills include language that NAEDA assesses would be problematic for the industry and have severe negative consequences for our members’ businesses. They include provisions that would fix the price of parts at “the most favorable price provided to authorized repair providers” and require unrestricted access to digital locks. These would create problems for dealers by essentially making the manufacturer their competitor in part sales, and then making it easier and more likely that modification of equipment would be made through access to digital locks, creating a greater burden on dealers in the repair of equipment and used equipment market.
Because of this, NAEDA is asking our members to please submit written testimony in opposition to both of these bills as soon as possible; the association has submitted the attached documents as written testimony. If you would like to assistance in drafting testimony, please contact our Director of Government Affairs, Kipp McGuire, at kmcguire@naeda.com or by phone at (771) 208-4009.
Written testimony must be submitted to the Committee clerk by email. Their contact information is:
Louis Mansolillo
Committee Clerk
222-2369
HouseCorporations@rilegislature.gov
The Committee Agenda can be found here for further reference.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss this further, please reach out to Kipp McGuire.
