Senate panel kills House bill to raise the flood damage threshold for cars....

The Senate Transportation Committee killed a bill Thursday afternoon that would have raised the threshold for branding vehicles as water damaged.

The bill sponsored by Del. Matt Lohr passed the House on a 73 - 25, here's the Daily Press story on the vote. Here's the full text of the proposal, and here's the context.

Current Virginia law says that if an insurance company doles out $1,000 or more for flood repairs, the title of the car or truck must be branded so potential buyers know the vehicle's history.

Del. Matt Lohr, R-Rockingham, sponsored the bill in part because the threshold has remained unchanged since 1966. Lohr came up with the idea after working on a task force with auto dealers, insurance companies and car recyclers and said it's unfair to leave a 44-year-old limit in place, especially considering the increasing cost of cars and trucks.

Lohr said inflation and the drastic increases in the sticker price of luxury cars make the current $1,000 limit too low of a bar. Lohr said a car owner could rack up that much water damage just from leaving a window open during a rainstorm. If replacing a pair of leather seats costs more than $1,000, the car would be branded for life as water-damaged.

"Nobody's trying to cheat the consumer here," Lohr said, noting that the 1966 threshold represents about $6,700 in 2010 when adjusted for inflation. "When people go to resell their cars, they're getting killed."

They haven't posted the committee vote on the General Assembly computer system yet - but it should be up on the following link fairly soon. Del. Robin Abbott, a outspoken critic of the bill and a consumer advocacy lawyer, worked with Senators this week to explain the potential ramifications. Abbott said on the floor that the bill would make Virginia a dumping ground for flood damaged cars.

"I was not a good bill," Abbott said. "I wanted to get the word out."   

Here's a link to the history of the bill including recent votes.

Comments

[Andrew Phillips]

It appears that Delegate Abbott is more successful in the Senate than she is in the House of Delegates. As a Delegate, she has done nothing for public education, health care or transportation. She even voted against the House budget amendments, which, as a result, means she is left with the Kaine budget that repealed the $950 million per year car tax reimbursements to localities, significantly cut funding to public education, and doubled the cuts to health care ($400 million) from what the House budget amendments did.