State Spares Consumer Department : Government: Budget cutters had proposed axing the watchdog agency that recently sought to revoke Sears’ license to perform auto repairs.

The state Department of Consumer Affairs has been saved from elimination as a bipartisan group of California lawmakers has dropped a proposal to help close the state’s budget deficit by killing the agency.

Disclosure of the reversal came less than a week after the department moved to seek revocation of Sears, Roebuck & Co.’s license to perform auto repairs in California.

Meanwhile, the department said it has received an avalanche of new consumer complaints about Sears’ auto shops--which could lead to additional charges against the state’s largest single operator of auto repair centers.

Assemblywoman Bev Hansen (R-Santa Rosa) said in an interview Tuesday that the lawmakers now favor a plan to save money by streamlining the department’s 38 boards and commissions, which oversee such professions as barbers, shorthand reporters and bill collectors, in addition to auto repair shops.

“After talking it through and seeking additional input from (Assembly) members, our idea today is not to eliminate it,” she said.

Sears had accused the department of trying to save itself from the legislative ax by launching a high-profile attack on the retailer, which has 70 automotive centers in California. But Hansen said lawmakers actually decided to spare the department last Wednesday, before it moved against Sears.

“The Sears investigation had nothing to do with our decision,” she said.

The charges against Sears resulted from an 18-month undercover investigation of its automotive repair centers in California. The department said Sears employees charged undercover investigators an average of $223 per car for unneeded repairs. The state said employees were pressured to oversell certain parts to meet quotas for shocks, springs and brake components.

Sears has said the department’s investigation is flawed, and what the state calls quotas are actually loose selling goals.

Since the department announced last Thursday that it was seeking to put Sears out of the auto repair business in California, it has received 603 consumer complaints--more than twice the number involving Sears’ auto shops for all of last year. Jim Schoning, chief of the department’s Bureau of Automotive Repair, said the complaints are being investigated and could lead to additional charges against Sears.

The department received 250 complaints about Sears auto centers in all of 1991.

Schoning said many of the complaints involved possible overcharging for brakes, a focus of the state’s investigation. Explaining the sudden jump in complaints about Sears, Schoning said: “I think a lot of people out there thought they were the Lone Ranger. All of a sudden they discovered they are not alone; that other people are having the same problems.”

The bureau’s toll-free hot line number has been flooded with 5,100 consumer calls--five times the usual volume--since charges were filed against Sears, Schoning said. “Some are calling to congratulate us, others want to tell us about another auto shop,” he said. A staff of six state employees worked through the weekend to process the paperwork.

In addition, Schoning said, about two dozen Sears employees have come forward with information about questionable business practices at the auto centers.

A spokesman for Sears in Chicago said the nation’s second-largest retailer had no comment on the additional complaints. “We are not familiar with the nature of the complaints, so we can’t comment,” spokesman Gordon Jones said.

Jones said Sears has received “many supportive comments from customers” and is providing refunds to dissatisfied customers who have complained since the state filed its charges. He did not know how many refunds had been issued.

The proposal to eliminate the Department of Consumer Affairs arose from a bipartisan effort to reduce the state’s costly bureaucracy to help close an $11-billion budget shortfall. The action would have saved taxpayers $2 million, however, because almost all of the department’s $212-million budget is derived from fees collected from the professionals it regulates.

Hansen said lawmakers are now focusing on reducing the size of the department’s various professional boards to no more than seven, and to better control their spending. Many boards now have 11 members and some have as many as 22.