Late last night, Senate Bill 1654 was scheduled for a hearing this coming Monday in the Senate Water, Agriculture, and Rural Affairs Committee. Here are the details for the hearing:
April 17, 2023
8:00 am in hearing room E1.012.
Texas Capitol Building
As a refresher, SB 1654 is an agriculture equipment specific Right to Repair bill sponsored by Senator Louis Kolkhorst (R). This bill has nothing to do with supporting customer repair. What it does are two things.
1) It would require OEMs to sell parts directly to owners and independent repair shops at the “lowest cost and most favorable terms offered by an OEM to an authorized repair provider.”
2) Require OEMs to provide any part, tool or documentation to “disable or enable an electronic security lock or other security related function.”
Call to Action: We must kill this bill in committee. In order to do that we need as many dealers as possible to testify at the hearing. If you are able to testify, please let me know as soon as possible. NAEDA will be testifying in-person at the hearing as well.
Whether you are able to testify or not, we need ALL dealers to contact the committee members prior to the hearing with a phone call and email. Here is a list of the committee members with contact information and the dealerships they represent in their district. Even if you are not represented, please contact all committee members urging them to oppose this bill.
Here is our Position Statement we have submitted to the committee. In addition to that, here are some talking points to consider in your phone call and emails:
- Support the Right to Repair, Not to Modify
- Safety of our employees, customers and the general public is paramount
- This bill fixes the price of parts at dealer net cost and prohibits dealers from making a profit. It also requires OEMs to sell parts directly which would make them our competitor instead of our supplier.
- The availability of parts has never been an issue for customers or independent repair shops. The majority of parts sold go out the door and are installed by a customer or independent repair shop.
- If forced to sell parts at cost, it would significantly decrease our parts inventory and increase downtime because parts wouldn’t be available on-hand.
- Allowing unfettered access to embedded software is not necessary for repair and would jeopardize safety, emissions criteria, durability of equipment
- Everything necessary for repair is already widely available and accessible for heavy equipment.
- The industry is committed to self-repair and has formalized that commitment in the memorandum of understanding between the major stakeholders in our industry. A legislative mandate is not necessary because a private sector solution already exists
If you have any questions about this, please contact me directly. I will be available through the weekend and will be arriving in Austin Sunday evening.