Battle of the boards heats up
cont'd

Power politics, some of the advocates suspect, played a key role in the governor's decision-making process.

Jill Dulich is a senior director of Marriott International and a former employers' representative on the workers' comp commission. She characterized the pharmaceutical industry, which has contributed more than $367,000 to Schwarzenegger, as being "very unhappy" over the recommendations in the prescription drug report.

Dulich said the state would be making a mistake if it gets rid of the workers' comp commission.
"It's the only organization in (state government) that does independent research and uses organizations from outside the state to get documentation," Dulich said. "It was one of the most crucial components to last year's reforms."

She said the elimination of the commission signals that "special interests are going to take over the system again."

Rick Rice, promoted Friday to undersecretary of the governor's Labor and Workforce Development Agency, said the commission's main function of preparing and overseeing reports on workers' comp can easily be contracted out.

"Anybody can do that," Rice said.

But the administration has decided to keep the New Motor Vehicle Board, which hears appeals on rulings by the director of the Department of Motor Vehicles and can restrict new dealerships from opening for business within 10 miles of existing ones.

"They feel their primary mission is to protect car dealers and not the public," said Rosemary Shahan, president of the Davis-based Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety.

The board's survival in the face of the effort to do away with it "shows the car dealers are special interests who have tremendous influence over this governor," Shahan said.

Peter Welch, president of the California Motor Car Dealers Association, said the board is needed to resolve disputes between car dealers and manufacturers. He said he found it "curious" that none of the board's critics who are airing their concerns now spoke up at the CPR's public hearing in September.
Even though the dealers have given substantial sums to Schwarzenegger, Welch said the association never attempted to intervene during the CPR process.

"We did not talk to the governor on this issue," Welch said. "We went through the process just like everyone else did."