with the 8th Annual ARA State Legislative Summit on March 17 in Washington, D.C. (see story on page 52). “The reasoning behind the development of the State Legislative Summit was that we saw things hap- pening in the states first, that is where precedent was being set,” says then-ARA President Sandy Blalock. “It is difficult to change things at the federal level. Change can happen much faster at the state level." “We had to target these issues from a different per- spective to make change – not just to government officials, but also to law enforcement, tax officials, and to communities in general,” she says. “That ulti- mately led to the first ARA State Legislative Summit. We knew that we needed to share information with one another so we don’t have to rewrite laws in other states from scratch. If we put our collective heads together at the state level, we’d get farther faster.” “Attending ARA’s Legislative Summit keeps every- one informed of the legislative issues that could potentially come to their state,” says Jessica Andrews, ARA Director of State Government & Grassroots Affairs. “We see it happen in clusters of states where bad legislation is adopted in one, and then adopted by neighboring states pretty quickly thereafter.” The proliferation of illegal operators competing with the professional automotive recycling industry is one such example. What started years ago as a slow, annoying leak of small-time illegal operators competing with the professional automotive recycling industry in a handful of states by skirting state legali- ties, has now become a gushing tsunami of sophisti- cated illegal networks literally swallowing up salvage in masses, finding even bigger loopholes in the system of licensing, and stopping at nothing to gain
full access to online salvage for profit outside of any regulatory system, environmental or otherwise. “The State Legislative Summit is even more impor- tant now because with all the years of the industry fighting to control salvage, we weren’t paying atten- tion to what was happening with unlicensed operators taking salvage from under us,” says Blalock, who is now an automotive recycling advocate, and Executive Director of the New Mexico Certified Automotive Recyclers, Utah Automotive Recyclers Association, and the Auto Recyclers of Indiana. Finally, some states lawmakers are listening and seeing the problem, only because active state auto- motive recycling associations are spearheading the charge against illegal activity and illustrating how states are losing funds in taxes and fees because of it. The activities of the State of California Auto Dismantlers Association (SCADA) and the Iowa Automotive Recyclers (IAR) are two prime examples getting attention.
Besides the importance of attending the ARA State Legislative Summit & Hill Day, Mike Swift, ARA First Vice President, recommends, “If you don’t have a Hill Day at your state Capitol or some kind of get- together with your state legislators – do it today. The annual trek up to the statehouse to meet with our state elected representatives has become so important to the Iowa Automotive Recyclers (IAR). Even if there isn’t legislation to discuss with a representative, it is a time that you can talk about the issues that we have to fight everyday, whatever the hurdles. It is amazing in a couple of hours over coffee and donuts how much you will be able to tell your legislators about what we do as auto recyclers!” –Caryn Smith
SCADA ATTACKS ILLEGAL ACTIVITY HEAD ON
he State of California Auto Dismantlers Association (SCADA) is tackling the issue of salvage acquisition by illegal operators head-on with an aggressive reallocation of their resources in an effort to level the playing field for licensed profes- sional auto recyclers.
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Although SCADA started building a database com- prised of information on illegal/unregulated opera- tions three years ago, it took official steps this past year to declare the California auto recycling industry in crisis and to ramp up its efforts to encourage members to submit complaint information. “Competition, for both ELVs and for parts sales, from the underground economy has increased tremendously over the past twenty years,” said Martha
Cowell, Executive Director, SCADA. “This was origi- nally due to increasing regulation and opening access to the salvage auctions, and it is now magnified hugely by e-commerce capabilities. We are now at the point where, unless something changes radically, unlicensed operators will be processing more ELVs than professional auto recyclers. We consider this a crisis that must be addressed.”
Of the 28 million registered vehicles in California, about 1.2 million are disposed of annually. “We estimate that about 30 percent of these ELVs are unaccounted for or are not tracked well enough to know where they’ve gone, along with all their haz- ardous materials and components,” says Cowell. The SCADA Board, according to Cowell, has estab-
January-February 2015 | Automotive Recycling 45
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