Question 1, the so-called “right to repair” law, was supposed to be a big battle between auto dealerships and non-affiliated repair shops over access to certain diagnostic and repair information which, previously, was only available if you took your car to a dealership for repairs. There’s more detail on the question itself at this link, which contains the official summary and the arguments set forth by proponents and opponents.
My initial inclination was to vote “yes” on question 1. However, after it was too late to remove the question from the ballot, the legislature enacted and the Governor signed a compromise bill that (at the time at least) was supported by both sides. The new legislation makes Massachusetts the first state in the country to deal with this issue.
When that legislation became law, advocates for both sides said they would join together in a campaign to persuade voters either to vote “no,” or to blank the question. But now, it seems, the “yes on 1” forces have had a change of heart, and are now thinking that maybe getting the ballot question passed wouldn’t be so bad after all, even despite the compromise.
To which I say, “bah.” These kinds of issues should ordinarily be worked out through the legislative process. In this case, they were. I don’t really care that advocates on one side or the other now think they can get a better deal via the ballot. The legislative process worked, and the legislature’s solution should be honored. If there are problems in the new law, I’m sure the Great and General Court is more than capable of ironing them out.
Vote NO on 1.
johnk says
I don’t think it’s fair to just disregard that.
Here is the Right to Repair press release.
Kind of weaseling around the agreement by saying “if you choose to vote on question 1”.
Are they advertising this position with paid ads? Not sure that they are.
But it seems inevitable to me that Question 1 will pass, just as it seems inevitable that the legislature won’t act on it. But screw it, I’ve voting for information being available in 2015 instead of 2018. If it’s the right thing to do, it’s the right thing to do, and that carries more weight than the group’s actions.
David says
it’s more of a process thing, along the lines of stomv’s comment below. The legislature has dealt with this issue, as it should. And I’d wager there’s a good chance that they will simply reimpose the legislative compromise if the ballot question passes.
whosmindingdemint says
from a process point of view. Also, I must admit, I have no complaints about the bill that was signed.
johnk says
Even though I’m voting yes, your position as I recall, is something you have been consistent on in the time that I’ve been here. I respect that.
As for stomv’s comment; did the ballot question forced the legislature to take up the issue in the first place? Sometimes you got to nudge the legislature to take up an issue. Sorry, but It is what it is.
David says
That’s fair enough. In this case, however, mission accomplished, which to me translates to voting no.
petr says
You vote for the legislator or you vote for someone else. You can also call, write letters, protest or even run against him/her. What you cannot do, sorry, is to second guess them once you’ve voted, or have the entire CommonWealth drive from the backseat. If that isn’t subtle enough for you, well, tough.
johnk says
and this is not on my high priority list, but there are good things to get done and means to highlight an issue to a legislator. Hopefully you can understand that position.
centralmassdad says
it is that the legislature can be trusted to respect the outcome of ballot questions
petr says
I’ve long considered them illegitimate and find if fully and completely within the purview of the lege to override, disrespect and otherwise disregard, wholly and completely ballot questions of any kind.
We are not a direct democracy.
If the lege themselves are not to be respected, and I’m fully engaged in that view myself, the answer isn’t to try to neuter the lege with ballot questions but to replace the lege with actual representation.
centralmassdad says
I’m pretty sure that Amendment Article 48 was adopted by action of the legislature. I am also pretty sure that the statutes implementing the inititative process were enacted by the legislature.
So what other legislative actions do you not respect?
petr says
I’m pretty sure that you can use a gun to shoot yourself in the foot… but why would you want to ?
marcus-graly says
I thought the law was written with the assumption that Question 1 would probably pass? If not, that was incredibly dumb on the part of the legislature. This is, honestly, a fairly low profile issue, and most voters are going decide based on the language they read in the voting booth or the state’s mailer, not any advertising either way. It’s been polling incredibly high and even if both sides stuck to the skip or vote no position, most voters wouldn’t get or would ignore that message and vote yes.
Mark L. Bail says
issue for voters, but not for lobbyists and contributors.
HR's Kevin says
I need a much better explanation than “don’t worry – we have this covered”.
stomv says
I lean strongly to voting no on all ballot initiatives, with two exceptions:
1. civil rights issues
2. issues dictating behavior of the great and general court itself
I help pay 200 ladies and gentlemen to serve as full time legislators. Why am I being asked to do their job too?
Mark L. Bail says
process is broken when a non-grassroots coalition can sponsor a question to extort legislation at the state level. This happened to the MTA when Stand for Children. In this case, it looks like two non-grassroots organizations are involved.
What bothered me about the Right to Repair question when I first learned of it was that I couldn’t tell who was right and who was wrong. I knew the dealers and manufacturers were against it, which ordinarily would lead me to a yes vote. I asked my local mechanic. He didn’t really seem to know much about it, other than that he supported it. I learned today that AAA was behind it. I have a AAA card, but I don’t necessarily trust them either. This is and was an issue best decided by the legislature, not voters who can’t figure out who to believe.
With that said, I don’t know how the issued played out on Beacon Hill and what the parties involved agreed to. And again, I have no real way of knowing. I’m inclined to side with the independent operators on this, but I don’t like the entire thing at all.
Senator Stan Rosenberg has a measure that would make it a little more difficult for moneyed interests to buy ballot initiatives. The proposal is as follows:
There are other measures that would help increase transparency for the ballot initiative process, but these would be a step in the right direction.
stomv says
I know this is a tangent to a pretty minor component of your recap of somebody else’s bill, but…
Why prohibit sex offenders? Look, if a person is out of jail, he or she probably needs a job. It’s probably pretty hard to get a job if you’ve got that kind of record, which makes the person even more likely for another failure of one kind or another.
Sig gatherers target adults. If a registered sex offender can shot at a Target, why can’t he stand in front of one getting signatures?
Mark L. Bail says
sex offender ban, except maybe like it adds what seems like common sense appeal. It certainly seems like fixing a problem that’s not a problem.
doubleman says
This was pretty much big business v. big business, without any real benefit to the consumers (or even the independent mechanics). It was really about the after market parts makers (like NAPA) versus the auto manufacturers, with a few random friends like the police (with a complete bullshit reason) and the biotech industry (with a slippery slope IP concern) thrown in. I lean toward YES for the chance that this could result in lower parts costs, which may be a pipe dream, and also to help curtail the trend toward protecting IP rights at all costs, which has gotten completely out of hand in some areas like music, software patents, and biological patents.
whosmindingdemint says
I’m not sure I would take my new Volt, Smart car, – whatever – to anyone but the dealer, from a practical point of view.
centralmassdad says
The reason people feel compelled to go to the dealer– where they pay $100+/hour of labor, rather than to an independent garage, where the cost may be FAR less than half of that, is because technical information necessary to do repairs are restricted to the dealer.
The comment above that this is about NAPA auto parts is pure BS; anyone can buy OEM parts if and when they choose to do so. This isn’t about parts, and if someone convinced you otherwise then you done got snowed.
The huge disparity in price between the dealer and independent garages is pure monopoly pricing.
Christopher says
…that there should not be initiatives and referenda. Let the legislature do its job and vote them out if we don’t like them. The only thing the public should vote on directly is a constitutional amendment.
marcus-graly says
On the one hand, it does provide a tool for citizens to get their legislature to act on issues they’ve been ignoring, but on the other hand, the process is often dominated by corporate money and front groups, rather than ordinary citizens.
I like the system here is Massachusetts, where the legislature can amend or repeal voter passed laws. Of course they do so at their peril, since the voters could elect someone else who would better adhere to their wishes, but it prevents poorly written, disastrous laws from becoming enshrined they way they are in California, (where I grew up).
Mark L. Bail says
a check on ballot questions. Ballot questions provide an opportunity for voters to move issues that might not otherwise be considered, such as medical marijuana.
Good legislation is crafted carefully by people who know what they’re doing. Politics may enter the picture, but competence less so. Politics and incompetence can enter the picture with ballot questions. Stan Rosenberg supports Question 3, for example, but he’ll be offering amendments to it.
realsupergirl says
I don’t even understand why this wouldn’t be supported widely. Why should the dealers be able to have proprietary ownership of repair records? Once you buy the car, it’s yours. You should be able to take it where you want to go, and not get charged extra because they are holding repair records hostage.
SomervilleTom says
The proponents and opponents of the bill came to an agreement supported by both — after the ballots had already been finalized. The contentious aspects that had driven the proponents have, apparently, been solved to their satisfaction.
HR's Kevin says
No one has satisfactorily explained why we should vote no.
petr says
Yes= doing legislators jobs for them.
No = no change, nullifying the question and leaving it in the hands of the legislators, whose job it is to handle it.
HR's Kevin says
Why do I care whether I am “doing the legislators jobs”? All I have to do is pick yes/no/abstain? How much work is that? It seems that you arguing philosophically against ballot questions. Fine, but I don’t actually believe that ballot questions are inherently wrong, so once again, why should I vote no?
What bad things will happen if I vote no?
petr says
Well… How would you act if somebody came to your work and tried to do your job for you? And specifically stated that they were doing so precisely because they don’t trust you to do it well enough?
Because it is ad-hoc democracy. Because it fosters the notion that representation is superfluous… Indeed even problematic. It provides the wrong solution for an ill defined and poorly understood situation that isn’t really aproblem and posits an entitlement where none exists.
fenway49 says
from Art Kinsman, the issues have not been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.
petr says
Art Kinsman is free to run for office if he wants more satisfaction from our republic
petr says
… and direct democracy, no matter how appealing and perhaps even more efficacious, is not how we do things. We have chosen one and we cannot, however much we might like to, suddenly veer off into the other as the whims possess us.
And, however flawed each separate path might be, a hybrid attempt at a middle road is, IMHO, very much more flawed.
Either you trust the vote, and the power, you’ve invested in your representative or you do not. There is no middle ground.
awkinsman says
In late July a first-in-the-nation Right to Repair law was unanimously passed by the legislature and signed by the governor requiring automakers to provide all repair and diagnostic information to car owners or their choice of repair shop. The law did the greatest good for the most people, namely, for owners of passenger vehicles.
The likely passage of the Right to Repair ballot initiative, Question 1 on November’s ballot, is ultimately what brought automakers to the table to negotiate an agreement with the Massachusetts Right to Repair Coalition and lawmakers.
The law’s passage came beyond the time where Question 1 could be taken off the ballot.
Right to Repair advocates embarked on an intensive public education campaign on the new law, and even suggested voters could skip the question if they were satisfied with the signed legislation.
However, we found that within our Coalition of 2000 independent repairers and among the general public, voters still overwhelmingly supported voting YES on Question 1. The “skip it” message simply served to confuse or infuriate voters.
Members of our Coalition such as AAA argued that although the law was a big first step, it did not go far enough just providing all repair information to fix the car. They argued consumers ought to own that information. The Massachusetts Motorcycle Association also legitimately contend that their members should also be included in the law, as well as recreational vehicles and big trucks.
We decided the only responsible position to take is to tell Right to Repair supporters they should vote YES on Question 1, not as a repudiation of the law, but rather as the public’s stamp of approval on this important consumer issue. What’s more, passage of Question 1 will help foster discussion in the legislature on how best to accommodate the repair needs of all highway users beyond the family passenger car.
With reliable polls showing overwhelming support of Question 1, we must turn our attention to what happens after the election, where all parties will have a constructive say in reconciling the law with the results of Question 1.
Art Kinsman
Massachusetts Right to Repair Committee