WASHINGTON -- The Outside Sales Support Network, a national group
representing independent travel agents, said it was pleased the
Maryland Legislature killed a bill that would have required certain
agencies and independent agents in the state to have $1 million in
errors and omissions insurance or post a $25,000 bond.
The bill "was off target," said Gary Fee, president of the
Jupiter, Fla.-based organization. Fee said the insurance and
bonding requirements would have done little to protect consumers
from an agency that collects their money and then shuts down and
would have created "undue financial hardship" on independent
agents.
According to a spokeswoman for House delegate Joan Pitkin
(D-Prince Georges County), who drafted the legislation with the
help of local agents, the measure was killed because Maryland
lawmakers "didn't think that the industry really needed the
bill."
Former ASTA president Philip Davidoff of Belair/Empress Travel
& Cruises in Bowie, Md., one of the agents who advised Pitkin
on the bill, said, "Given our choice, we didn't want legislation.
But if [the Maryland Legislature] wanted legislation, we would help
them draft something we could live with.
"I would have liked to have seen something because it would have
put a handle on the independent agents," Davidoff said. "But I
would rather have no legislation than the wrong bill."
Pitkin introduced the bill after consumers lost thousands of
dollars when a long-established agency, which had recently came
under new management, suddenly shut down last year. The bill would
have required agencies and independent agents in business for fewer
than three years to prove they have $1 million in errors and
omissions insurance or post a $25,000 bond with the state attorney
general's office.
Support for the bill began to evaporate at a February hearing in
the Maryland House when the attorney general's office raised
concerns about the cost of administering the program. The attorney
general suggested that each of the estimated 400 agencies in
Maryland would have to pay a $400 fee to cover the costs and the
$25,000 bond requirement should be raised to a higher, undetermined
amount.
When the prospect of annual fees and higher bonds came up, trade
support unraveled, and legislators began questioning whether the
bill actually would deter the type of consumer loss that
precipitated it.
Fee predicted the bill would resurface. "All it takes is to have
a bunch of kids left at the bus stop or the airport holding some
bogus tickets and it is back on the docket."