As you know, we have been working over the past few months on Right to Repair legislation. Our efforts have been focused on HB 4673, which is a bill specific to farm equipment and was referred to the House Agriculture Committee. However, there have been six other Right to Repair bills introduced this session in Michigan.
One of those bills, HB 4562, was scheduled for a hearing last minute in the House Regulatory Reform Committee for tomorrow, September 12th at 10:30 EDT.
The bill itself is what we consider a broad-based bill, meaning that it applies to all products that rely for their functioning on digital electronics. The bill specifically includes farm equipment in the definition of a digital electronic device. This new bill is essentially identical to what we started out with for HB 4673.
This bill is clearly redundant for our industry. We have requested to be removed from the bill so that we can continue to focus on HB 4673. With that said, NAEDA will be testifying virtually at the hearing tomorrow. Here is our position statement that we have submitted to members of the committee and staff.