LEGISLATIVE UPDATE

by Kevin Walli, AASP-MN Lobbyist

Legislative Session Begins

AASP-MN Reaches Out to Insurers

The Minnesota Legislature convened on January 5 with Minnesota continuing to be the only state in the Union operating with divided government.

Every other state has the executive branch and/or both bodies of their legislature controlled by a single party – either Republican or Democrat – while Minnesota has a DFL Governor and DFL House but a Republican-controlled Senate. Essentially, everything approved by the Minnesota Legislature must have passed muster with both political parties. You would expect that what emerges is a more balanced set of proposals, but sometimes it’s simply a barrier to passing anything at all.

AASP-MN’s legislative agenda once again seeks to change certain state statutes in the realm of the insurance claims process. The insurance industry is very strongly supported, and very strongly supports, the Republicancontrolled Senate and, in order to accomplish any change to the insurance claims process, we would need the support, or at least “non-opposition”, of the insurance industry.

We’ve embarked on that process in the early days of the 2021 legislative session. Our issues this year focus on making it an illegal claims practice for an insurer to deny payment for repair procedures that a vehicle manufacturer designates as necessary to make safe repairs to the vehicle. This is a carry-over issue for us and one on which we have not yet gained the insurance industry’s support.

We have also proposed amendments to the statute which reduces the timeframe for inspecting damage and reaching final agreement on repair costs.

Our third initiative pertains to establishing a reasonable marketplace within which repair shops must obtain replacement parts. Rather than having a nationwide market, the AASP-MN proposal would require that market price be determined by replacement parts available from vendors within a 150-mile radius of the repair shop.

We have engaged in initial discussion with the Insurance Federation of Minnesota on all three of these topics. We are not particularly hopeful that we will see movement on the OEM repair procedures legislation. The Insurance Federation of Minnesota staff has indicated that the insurers believe this is an issue which should be addressed on a national basis rather than with a patchwork of state laws.

At our early January meeting with the Insurance continued on page 20

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