State Senate Votes to Abolish Dry Cleaning Board, Only One in U.S.

With some legislators calling it the “good government move of the year,” the Senate on Thursday voted 21 to 13 to abolish the state Board of Dry Cleaning and Fabric Care, the nation’s only licensing agency for dry cleaners.

But an opponent of the measure to eliminate the 41-year-old licensing agency immediately moved for “reconsideration,” a parliamentary maneuver that forces another vote next week.

Should the outcome be the same, the measure by Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra) will go back to the Assembly for concurrence before being sent to Gov. George Deukmejian.

If the bill is signed into law, it will mark the first time the California Legislature has abolished a licensing board that it created. Since its inception in 1945, the dry cleaning board has survived several previous abolition attempts, including moves championed by former governors Edmund G. Brown Jr. and Ronald Reagan.

Johnson launched his crusade to abolish the panel after Anaheim dry cleaner Joe Kaska, then 76, was jailed in May, 1984, for failing to maintain a surety bond required as a condition of a dry cleaning license.

The incident was mentioned during Thursday’s Senate debate, with Sen. Herschel B. Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles), a board supporter, saying that Kaska had started “complaining about harassment” after he bodily expelled a board agent from his dry cleaning store.

But Sen. Edward R. Royce (R-Anaheim) said Kaska was taken to jail because overzealous board agents, concerned about legislative attempts to abolish the agency, were trying to justify the board’s existence.

“Neither consumers nor dry cleaners need this expensive and unnecessary bureaucracy,” said Sen. Becky Morgan (R-Los Altos). “ . . . California is the only state in the nation that licenses dry cleaners. And those in other states are no less professional and no less expert than their counterparts here in California.”