Lawmaker to Test Fabric of Often Embattled Agency

Assemblyman Ross Johnson, the feisty La Habra Republican who last year waged unsuccessful ballot crusades against welfare costs and political financiers, is at war these days with the state agency that licenses California’s dry-cleaning industry.

Johnson thinks he’s “got a shot at” doing something two ex-governors, Edmund G. Brown Jr. and Ronald Reagan couldn’t--abolish the 40-year-old state Board of Fabric Care.

Although only one other state--Oklahoma--licenses its dry cleaners, California’s embattled agency has survived five previous legislative efforts to kill it, including one last year.

Again this year, the board and the industry it supposedly regulates are fighting for its survival.

Johnson is hoping that his bill, assigned to the Consumer Protection Committee chaired by Assemblyman Robert Frazee (R-Carlsbad), will fare better than measures introduced in 1967, 1968, 1971, 1979 and last year.

Traditionally, licensing agencies are virtually impossible to dismantle once they’re in place. Still, the Board of Fabric Care, created in 1945, has demonstrated an exceptional knack for survival.

The two earliest efforts to abolish it--endorsed by the state’s watchdog Little Hoover Commission--both died on the Assembly floor after passing the Senate. In 1971, then-Gov. Reagan’s bill to dismantle the agency was killed in committees of each house, with then-Sen. George Deukmejian voting with the Democratic majority that the issue needed further study.

A 1979 attempt died because the Brown administration couldn’t even find a legislative sponsor. And last year, despite general agreement that the board was not doing a good job, only two lawmakers voted for an abolition bill offered by Sen. Leroy Greene (D-Carmichael) in the Senate Business and Professions Committee.

The fact that no one at the time could remember the last time the board had suspended a license angered some senators at last year’s hearing.

Although they admit that enforcement has been inadequate in the past, defenders of the board say it has lots of important functions, including saving consumers thousands of dollars by mediating complaints that seldom get public attention.

“We are not out to take away a man’s livelihood,” said board president Robert Frederick of Beverly Hills. “We just want him to do what’s right.”

Too, supporters say the agency has stepped up its consumer protection and public health enforcement efforts greatly after a severe scolding during last year’s Senate hearing.

Critics see recent changes differently, however. They see staff changes and increased activity--such as the board’s revocation of an Orange dry cleaner’s license earlier this month, the first revocation in 10 years--as actions of a desperate agency trying to convince skeptics it has something to do.

“It just proves what we’ve been saying all along,” said Gene Erbin of the University of San Diego’s Center for Public Interest Law. “They have absolutely nothing legitimate to do.” Consumer groups, the Deukmejian Administration and an array of co-sponsors for Johnson’s bill that includes liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, agree that the board performs no useful function that can’t be done more efficiently elsewhere.

Last week, the Department of Consumer Affairs said it would support Johnson’s bill if he amended it to return most of the board’s $1.3-million budget reserve to licensees, and if other provisions were added regulating the use, storage and disposal of toxic solvents used in dry cleaning.

Johnson said he already had both amendments in mind and will tack them onto the bill before its scheduled March 28 hearing before Frazee’s committee.

The board’s $900,000 annual budget is funded entirely through annual license fees of $30 to $100, depending on type.

For Johnson and consumer groups who complain that licensing agencies offer more protection to an industry than to consumers, the Board of Fabric Care has become an admittedly symbolic target.

It is “the most ludicrous example of regulatory excess,” said Erbin, who engineered last year’s unsuccessful effort to dismantle the board although he only officially registered as a lobbyist this week.

“If there ever was an instrumentality of state government that should be abolished, this is it,” echoed Assemblyman Johnson.

Johnson has made the board’s abolition a top legislative priority, even sending out 3,300 letters to dry cleaners asking their support for his bill.

For the Orange County conservative, whose basic political philosophy is that government intrudes too often into people’s lives and pocketbooks, the issue seems tailor-made.

However, that philosophy and the years-long efforts of some groups to abolish the agency had little or nothing to do with launching Johnson on this latest crusade against what he views as government senselessness.

Johnson admits that until he was aroused to anger over the treatment of a constituent, he had never heard of the agency, was not even aware that an effort to abolish it had failed last year.

The constituent is 76-year-old Joe Kaska, who had operated a dry cleaning store in Anaheim since 1938. Last year, Kaska spent six hours in the Anaheim jail as a result of a dispute with agents of the board over a technical and, Johnson says, inadvertent licensing violation.

“It was literally a result of my trying to help a constituent who had a complaint,” said Johnson. “I fully expected it to be resolved satisfactorily.”

Michael Siegel, the 37-year-old bearded enforcement-minded lawyer the board hired last year, defends the arrest as “legally appropriate” but concedes that it could, and should, have been avoided.

That’s an interesting attitude, says Johnson, who admits he doesn’t return Siegel’s calls anymore. It was Siegel, not his predecessor, who “got me angry,” Johnson said.

‘He wrote me a letter that made Kaska sound like Al Capone . . . I tell you, it’s ludicrous,” Johnson added.

No matter how it is interpreted, however, the Kaska incident is illustrative of a major problem facing the embattled agency.

The board’s strongest supporters admit there have been serious problems in the past with enforcement. Some board members even say that past boards--but not this one--have treated the industry with kid gloves. Some blame the former agency executive officer, Beverly Bair, who was fired last year, for lax enforcement in the past. Others, including board members, say Bair, who worked at the board’s pleasure, was a tougher administrator than the board wanted.

But while board supporters point to past problems as an example of how things have changed, critics seize each new admission as further ammunition in their effort to abolish the board.

Board members say, too, that the agency’s uniqueness makes it vulnerable to attack by those who’d like to do away with all government regulation. But the board’s backers contend it shows how progressive California has been.

“I think it has been a great help to consumers . . . and I think Michael Siegel has done a lot to turn things around in his short term of office,” said Pamela Robertson-Glor, the most recent appointee and one of two Deukmejian appointees on the seven-person board.

Siegel says as long as he’s around the board will remain tough on enforcement. Critics say Siegel will probably be fired and replaced with a more laid-back executive once the pressure is off.

Hedy Govenar of the California Fabricare Institute, the industry’s lobbyist, said she expects that the vote in committee will be close.

Committee Chairman Frazee said his feelings are “kind of mixed . . . I suppose, on the side of government efficiency, I think it should go.”

The industry once again is opposing Johnson’s bill.

According to Legi-Tech, a private data-gathering service, the Dry Cleaners and Allied Trades Political Action Council has, since 1981, contributed more than $19,000 to Republican political committees and California legislators, including $3,375 to members of the Senate committee that killed last year’s legislation and $300 to members of the Assembly committee that will first consider the issue this year.

But Govenar said the industry stance this year was not unanimous, and Johnson said some dry cleaners even tried to work out a compromise with him.

“Frankly, there are mixed feelings everywhere this year,” Govenar admitted. “Last year, the board was under attack for what it didn’t do. This year it is in trouble for doing too much.”