Postscript: Dry Cleaner Still Awaits Finish--for Firm and Fabric Board

Joe Kaska, the Anaheim dry cleaner who once went to jail in a dispute with the state Board of Fabric Care, had hoped that both he and the board would be out of business by now.

Kaska, who is 76, wants to retire from the dry cleaning business he has run for the past 40 years, but he still is negotiating with the city over the price of the building.

And he wants the Board of Fabric Care, the state agency that regulates the dry cleaning industry, to be abolished. But that hasn’t happened either.

Kaska, 76, had a running feud with the Board of Fabric Care that culminated in a six-hour stay in the Orange County Jail last year. It was that incident that prompted Kaska, who operates Ritz Cleaners at 307 E. Old Lincoln Ave. in Anaheim, to complain to Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra).

Johnson took up the cause and carried a bill to abolish the agency, which he called a “meaningless piece of bureaucracy.”

An Assembly committee approved the legislation, but last week Johnson, knowing he did not have enough votes on the Senate Business and Professions Committee, shelved the bill. He doesn’t plan to revive the issue until next January.

Kaska said he was not surprised that Johnson had to give up on what was the sixth attempt to abolish the agency in recent years.

“I’m not surprised about anything,” Kaska said, but he said he still is peeved that Gov. George Deukmejian never answered the letter he wrote him after his arrest on May 4, 1984.

Kaska’s problems began when he decided to drop out of the California Fabricare Institute, the dry cleaning trade association, after city officials told him his building and those around it would be demolished and replaced with apartments for the elderly. Kaska decided he would retire when the city bought his building.

But, unknown to him, when he allowed the association dues to lapse, he automatically lost the surety bond the association had obtained for him. The bond is required of dry cleaners in case customers lodge complaints about them. He wound up in jail after the state board found out he was operating without the bond.

Although Johnson’s bill to abolish the board died, one thing has changed since Kaska’s run-in with the regulators: Instead of arresting dry cleaners, agents of the Board of Fabric Care now may issue citations requiring them to appear in court.

Officials of the board, however, deny that publicity about Kaska’s arrest influenced to the decision to change enforcement procedure.

“Mr. Kaska was arrested for his refusal to cooperate, but that had nothing to do with the new procedure,” said Michael Siegel, the board’s executive director. “But the new procedure does not involve arrests, except in extreme circumstances.”

Siegel said the board knows that the idea of abolishing the state agency is not dead. “It is still hanging over our heads. We’ll be fighting again in January,” he said.

For Kaska, however, the fight is over. “I’m dickering with the city on the price of the property,” he said. “When we come to terms, I’ll have 90 days to get out. They’ve already torn down all the buildings around me. So, I’m finished.”