Bill Deregulating State’s Dry Cleaners Faces Key Test

Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra) faces the toughest hurdle yet in his effort to convince California lawmakers, for the first time ever, to abolish a licensing agency the Legislature created.

Johnson’s bill to abolish the obscure Board of Fabric Care, which oversees the state’s dry cleaning industry, is scheduled for a hearing today before the Senate Business and Professions Committee.

That panel killed a similar effort to abolish the agency last year. And, earlier this year, the committee overwhelmingly approved legislation to expand the agency’s authority.

Lobbyists on both sides said it is doubtful that the panel will abolish the board if it votes today.

“There are more ‘no’ votes than ‘yes’ votes,” lamented lobbyist Gene Erbin of the anti-regulatory Center for Law in the Public Interest. “It doesn’t look good.”

Committee consultant Amiel Jaramillo said late last week that Johnson has given no indication that he intends to postpone a vote.

Launched in Anger

Johnson, who says the Fabric Care board serves no useful purpose, launched his effort to abolish it in anger over the jailing last year of an elderly Anaheim dry cleaner. Johnson says board agents had the dry cleaner, 76-year-old Joe Kaska, jailed for a technical and inadvertent licensing violation.

But Johnson has found himself allied with others who see the the Fabric Care board as a symbolic target in an uphill battle to rid the state government of unnecessary regulation.

Once in place, licensing boards in California have been impossible to dismantle. Six previous legislative efforts to abolish the 40-year-old Fabric Care board, including moves by former governors Edmund G. Brown Jr. and Ronald Reagan, all failed.

Although legislators once allowed a licensing board for construction inspectors to expire under a so-called “sunset clause,” state lawmakers have never “acted affirmatively” and voted an end to a licensing board, Erbin said.

No other state licenses or regulates its dry cleaning industry.

Oklahoma, the last besides California to do so, abolished its counterpart Dry Cleaning Board July 1.

Johnson said last week that he would use the abolition of the Oklahoma board as ammunition in his presentation to the committee today.

Since Johnson introduced his bill Jan. 7, the board’s supporters have argued that its uniqueness only shows that California is progressive.

Regulations Scrapped

But Johnson said the trend in other states has been to do away with such boards. North Carolina stopped regulating dry cleaners in 1940. Florida followed in 1943 and New Mexico stopped in 1979. No other states regulated dry cleaners to begin with.

Last year, the Senate Business and Professions Committee voted against abolishing the board, although several members criticized it, charging that it had been lax in enforcement.

Since then, the board has fired its executive director and replaced her with Michael Siegl, described as an enforcement-minded lawyer.

“He seems to be doing a good job,” said Jaramillo.

Hedy Govenar, lobbyist for the California Fabricare Institute, said the board should survive if the committee considers its record during the past year in enforcing consumer complaints and policing the “careless use” of toxic chemicals.

“This is virtually the same bill they killed last year,” Govenar said.