Car-buyer protection bill among big vetoes

By Margaret Talev and Alexa H. Bluth – Sacramento Bee Capitol Bureau
Friday, October 1, 2004

Saying its wording was too vague, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday vetoed a so-called Car Buyers Bill of Rights, prompting a backlash from consumer advocates who accused him of rewarding one of his biggest sets of campaign donors at the expense of working-class Californians.

"The car dealers practically ran his campaign," said Rosemary Shahan, president of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, the group that sponsored AB 1839 by Assemblywoman Cindy Montañez, D-San Fernando. "So he really just delivered for them, big-time."

The action was one of 71 vetoes and 50 signings the Republican governor released on the final day for him to act on bills lawmakers sent him this year.

As expected, he also rejected legislation easing the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada in defiance of federal policy.

But it was Schwarzenegger's veto of the car-buyer legislation that drew the loudest response.

The bill set minimum standards for "certified" used cars. Vehicles carrying that label could not have been totaled, returned under the state's lemon law, had their odometers rolled back or have had damage that could be considered a substantial risk to buyer safety.

New-and used-car dealers would have been barred from misleading consumers about the cost of such add-ons as fabric protection to inflate the purchase price.

Dealers also would have been required to put buyers' credit scores in writing, in explaining what interest rates they qualified for, and could have added no more than 2.5 percentage points as a markup on the rate for which they qualified.

A provision allowing used-car buyers to return their purchases within a three-day cooling-off period was removed before final passage, after the governor's advisers indicated to lawmakers that he would not agree to it.

In his veto message, the governor said protecting consumers was "of paramount concern" to him but that the bill contained vague wording that could bog down the state Department of Motor Vehicles with "costly investigations over unenforceable and conflicting definitions."