Legislation related to the industry on the table in states around the country
By John Yoswick
The collision repair industry has recorded some legislative wins in several states in the past year.
In Rhode Island in January, for example, lawmakers voted to override Governor Dan McKee’s mid-2021 veto of legislation related to shops’ use of materials calculator systems and mark-up of sublet charges. When the law now goes into effect, it will be an unfair claims practice for an insurer to refuse to pay a body shop for documented necessary sublet services, “including costs and labor incurred to research, coordinate, administrate or facilitate the necessary sublet service, and an automotive industry standard mark-up.”
Existing Rhode Island law made it an unfair claims practice for an insurer to refuse to compensate a shop for materials based on “industry-recognized software programs or systems,” but with the veto override that now is amended to provide some specific examples of such systems, and specify that any such system “must be used in its entirety.”
The votes to override the veto were 24-6 in the Senate and 43-17 in the House, well above the 60 percent majority required.
“There are over 200 small business auto repair shops here in the state of Rhode Island,” Sen. Maryellen Goodwin, a Democrat serving in the state Senate since 1987, said ahead of the override vote in that chamber. “I will …”
