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November 4, 2019
Day on the Hill Draws NIADA Members to D.C. ROLL TIDE: Alabama dealers Erek and Tamaria Yarbrough at the Friends of the Auto Industry Congressional Reception overlooking the Capitol.
By Jeffrey Bellant
Rush - Dated Material
Leaders of the National Independent Automobile Dealers Association returned enthused and challenged from their annual Day on the Hill and National Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., last month. “We had more than 235 people at the event,” said NIADA’s Shaun Petersen, senior vice president of legal & government affairs. It’s a far cry from the first year when about 80 to 90 dealers attended. Petersen said a core group that first attended has continued to come, and that core has expanded each year. The underlying goal is making sure members on the Hill understand
NIADA and its mission. NIADA’s trips always seem to fall in the middle of news events. One year, the Day on the Hill took place as Republicans voted on their new House speaker. Last year’s event took place in the midst of the Bret Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination hearings and this year’s event took place as the impeachment investigation began. But NIADA had its own priorities. “This year we had four legislative issues that we took up on the Hill,” Petersen said. Those included: arbitration, a new credit loss accounting standard, the USMCA and safety recalls. Petersen said the arbitration issue has come up in a bill which has passed the House and would
prohibit a pre-dispute arbitration agreement. “It would have a direct negative impact on our members,” Petersen said. A similar bill came up for a Senate vote a couple of years ago but Vice President Mike Pence broke a deadlock to defeat it. On the credit loss issue, Petersen said the Financial Accounting Standards Board implemented a new accounting standard that would drastically change how banks and finance companies account for reserve for expected credit losses. “The negative impact of that new standard would diminish the accessibility of credit to not only our customers but it would impact
dealers as customers that work with banks and finance companies,” Petersen said. In recent weeks the FASB has voluntarily extended the implementation date of this standard for a couple of years, Petersen said. The USMCA remains up in the air, especially with the partisan divide and the impeachment inquiry. The fourth issue is not unfamiliar to NIADA members. Henry Mullinax, NIADA president, said the recall issue remains an annual point of discussion for the D.C. trip. Sen. Richard Blumenthal has continued to push legislation that Continued on page 6
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