Trump. Right to Repair has its limits? What do you think? Our Colorado unelected boards and their “presumptive right”.
I am aware that President Trump was shot. He is apparently healthy and will recover. I am not aware of any details as to the shooter, his motivation, etc.
This is a story I will be watching, but likely not writing too much on. I will also be watching how our state officials and the media in Colorado act. I may or may not touch on that.
Keep President Trump, our country, and the other victims in your thoughts. Recommit to the idea that (just as it is for any group) the actions of one extremist do not necessarily reflect an entire group.
In the meantime, even though it is important news, it is just as important to keep an eye on what happens locally. So expect me to continue with my usual theme of state and local issues. Please save some space for those as it would be too easy to hide bad local and statewide decisions in the shadow of something like Trump’s shooting.
Right to Repair has its limits? What do you think?
I'm a fan or reading widely and counterpoint, so I wanted to put up Byron Pelton's op ed about the limits of Right to Repair for your consideration.
In general I'm in support of the movement to allow a right to repair. I support it for Ag and for electronics (the two major categories this state has written law on), and for the simple fact that I'm leery of big companies having more power than they already do.
Senator Pelton** sees a limit here. Quoting his op ed:
"Colorado has seen several bills introduced on this topic, and has passed three of them — covering agriculture, wheelchairs, and this year, consumer electronics. There have even been conversations looking to expand this policy to other products, like medical devices. But on that front, we should think very hard before going down that road."
Senator Pelton argues for this care because, unlike farm equipment or consumer electronics (the argument here is a little more muddied for things like an electric wheelchair), if the repair of medical equipment gets messed up, a third party is likely to be hurt or killed.
That's a fair point.
I suppose the tipping point (for me at least) is the competence of the tech doing the repairing. Taking an analogy from dealing with mechanics at dealerships and at independent shops, I'm not so sure that a company tech is any better or worse on average than an independent. You're likely to find good and bad in both places.
Caution is due here: you don't want a hospital skimping by hiring the equivalent of a shade tree mechanic to work on an MRI machine. I think there is a way to write any future attempts to extend right to repair into the medical domain (or any other life-critical domain) to avoid this, however.
What do you think?
**For full disclosure, be aware he's my state senator, but I saw this op ed online and chose to write about it myself.
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/opinion/right-to-repair-is-not-without-its-limits-podium/article_c9034d98-285c-11ef-87e9-2f101523906e.html
Our Colorado unelected boards and their “presumptive right”.
A quote from the Sun article linked first below:
"Unlike the new federal reality, state law in Colorado says agencies have the presumptive right to author detailed rules carrying out legislative directives, Polis said."
Let me put this in plain English: unelected boards in Colorado end up making a whole lot of decisions that have huge impacts on business and your life in this state.
Oh, and there will be no court decisions to bring this trend back to center either, because the ability to do this (unlike at the Federal level) is built right into the law!
Depending on where or what you've read lately, you may have heard varying versions of the United States Supreme Court tossing out the Chevron doctrine. The full story is long and complicated and beyond the scope of this post.
If you would like to learn some more, I gave you a couple links second and third below. I tried to pick two that were on opposite poles of the ideological divide for some contrast.
For our purposes here (contrasting Colorado with the new "federal reality" as Polis has it), it's enough to know that prior to the recent United States Supreme Court ruling Federal agencies (think EPA as an example) could write AND THEN ALSO interpret their own rules/authority in the case of disputes. In other words, if you didn't like a decision by a federal rulemaking body, there was no way to get judicial review of whether that body had the authority it claimed or was interpreting statute correctly.
The Chevron Doctrine is essentially that the judiciary deferred to the "expert" judgment of the federal body. By knocking down this prior ruling, the current US Supreme Court has returned to the former state of things: that the judiciary has the authority to decide controversies involving FEDERAL rulemaking bodies.
And I highlight federal above because this is not, and will not be for the near future, the case in Colorado. Politicians of both parties here have slowly chipped away at the power of the legislature and turned it over to an ever-growing collection of state boards. .
These boards, of course, being largely appointed by elected officials, some which spread the appointing around to various elected people and some which are appointed only by the governor, and some which are (in a delightfully 2nd level approach to un-accounability) appointed by other appointed officials.**
Point being, that the creations of these boards has almost always included legal clarity that (as if our rubberstamp CO State Supreme Court would ever disagree) that these boards have the authority to make all kinds of decisions elected officials used to make. That these boards can rest easy knowing their decisions will be backed up by courts, without any sort of precedent like the Chevron Doctrine needed.
A victory for those who like to have decisions made more by those who are elected, those who are approachable, those who are accountable at the federal level.
A loss of same for us here in Colorado.
**Note, there are sometimes rules about the professions and locations of appointees, but, as we have seen more than once with Polis, those "rules" are to him something of a guide, a grey area: good if it suits your purpose, ignored if not.
https://coloradosun.com/2024/07/03/colorado-scotus-environment-decisions/
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/what-happens-if-supreme-court-ends-chevron-deference