Legislative Report - April 2025

Steve Panten

We need your help!

What’s great about ABATE’s Lobby Day is once it is over, we see progress on our issues. That also means that we need to be ready to act quickly when needed. Bill drafts can be assigned bill numbers and scheduled for Public Hearings with minimal notice so….bikers be ready!

AB135 - Our Penterman/Jacque Right to Repair bill draft has a bill number! But we are seeing issues come up. Already GM, Polaris, John Deere, Auto Manufacturers and rumor has it, The Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce are lobbying leadership in opposition to it. We have bipartisan support with both Democrats and Republicans signing on to it and it was moved to the Assembly Committee on State Affairs where we have friends. The Committee consists of Representatives Swearingen, Green, Summerfield, Moses, Wittke, Spiros, Piwowarczyk, Sinicki, Kirsch and Roe. If your elected Representative is on this list, we need your help!

This piece of legislation was drafted to ensure consumers had a choice when it comes to taking their vehicles and products in for repair. We are asking the legislature to ensure the tools and technology are available to everyone to troubleshoot and make repairs. This is especially going to impact the independent repair shops for motorcycles and cars. We need to get the message out to them. One thing we heard from Penterman’s office was that when the Public Hearing is scheduled, we need to get small business owners to Madison to testify how this is needed to protect their business. Not only does it affect the consumers when they are required to take products back to authorized dealers and possibly pay more for repairs, but what about the shops that have the skills to do the repairs but cannot access the information they need?

We will need to build a large alliance of small business owners to help us. Now is the time to get started! Who do you know that understands the importance of this piece of legislation? Start talking to them and asking if they are willing to help take on the large manufacturers. We can do this if we have enough support. Car repair shops, motorcycle shops, small engine repair shops and most important, farm implement repair shops, heck, even McDonalds franchise owners can talk about how it affected them when they couldn’t fix their McFlurry machines. With our Attorney General Josh Kaul signing on to the multi-state lawsuit against John Deere, we have a start. The lawsuit was filed because John Deere promised to make the technology to fix their tractors available to the farmers, but it hasn’t happened. So, let’s get started. Not only will we need these business owners to step up to help us, but we will need them to bring others that they have relationships with. Get them on board now, getting them to write letters is ok but we need them to show up in Madison when the time is right. Fill the Committee room, talk about how requiring everyone to use an authorized dealer for repairs is going to affect their business. If there is someone that you need me to help talk to, let me know.

The next issue is timing. A Public Hearing can be scheduled 2 or 3 days in advance, so it is very short notice sometimes. We will need to be ready. Of course, we would put out a Call to Action as soon as we learn when the hearings are scheduled, but I know that is not convenient. Just like Lobby Day being the most important day for motorcyclists and having to make sacrifices to be in Madison, this is a very important day for their business’s future.

Next up - SB82/AB83 are our Consumer Choice for modes of power in our vehicles and equipment bills. So, we are one step further here because we have bill numbers, and they are scheduled to Committees. I spoke with Senator Tomczyk’s office about scheduling a Public Hearing and they said that they do not have enough agenda items to do it right now, but it is on the list. Again, we need to be ready. Let’s build relationships with Snowmobile clubs, UTV clubs, car clubs, landscape companies, anyone who would be affected by policies dictating the type of engine they are going to have in their new vehicles or equipment. We need to have people in Madison to show this is important. It can’t be just the motorcyclists delivering this message for them, we need their help too. Again, as soon as we hear about a Public Hearing, we need to get people there. Especially if your legislator is on the committee. Committee members in the Senate are: Tomczyk, Hutton Wanggard, Carpenter and Spreitzer. In the Assembly it is; VanderMeer, Spiros, Maxey, B. Jacobson, Haywood and Arney. If this is one of your elected officials, we really need you there. If you do not want to speak, we will be there to do it for you, but you being there shows the legislators that you are watching.

So that was a lot of information. To summarize it, we need help. We are learning that we can be more successful if we have more help, more horsepower. Who doesn’t like more horsepower? Just like your bike, let’s figure out how to get more horsepower out of what we have, and it starts with showing up. We are Freedom Fighters, let’s get ready to fight for our freedoms again.

Steve