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Florida to Deregulate the Auction Business:
Say It Ain't So
On April 7, 2011, the Florida House of Representatives voted to
deregulate 19 different types of businesses to include auction
houses and auctioneers. The bill is HB 5055. It still has to
clear the state senate and if that happens, this controversial
and important piece of legislation is slated to go into effect
on July 1, 2011.
Imagine you just spent over a thousand dollars and several weeks
going to school to become an auctioneer; or you may have decided
to forego school and do your training by serving as an
apprentice under another licensed auctioneer. The apprenticeship
program, in the state of Florida, takes two years. Regardless of
which option you chose, you finished the required training and,
after much studying, you passed the state test. It was
time-consuming and somewhat difficult but it was all worth it!
Or was it? You now learn that you could have been playing golf
instead of going to school or training as an auctioneer's
apprentice.
You suddenly find yourself in possession of a license that will
soon be meaningless. Not only don't you need that license you
worked so hard to get, but all the rules, regulations and laws
that were such an intricate part of your training are now null
and void.
That's the bad news. The good news is you no longer have to
worry about adhering to the Florida statutes governing
auctioneers and auction houses. Would it be a good idea to abide
by them anyway? Only if you want to keep your customers. How
this is all going to play out is yet to be determined.
There are many people who will be happy about HB 5055. They are
the people who want to shrink government - a government they
already view as being way too big. Small businesses in
particular have a hard time dealing with an overbearing
bureaucracy and an ever-increasing list of rules, licenses, fees
and paperwork.
The other side of the coin is the concern for consumer
protection. Once the deregulation goes into effect, what is to
stop any number of con artists from setting up shop all around
the state? If auctioneers no longer need a license then those
people wanting to be auctioneers only have to snap their fingers
and they are automatically auctioneers. The same applies to
those who want to open an auction house. All someone has to do
is find a building and hang a sign.
It's too bad that those who are responsible for HB 5055 felt it
had to be all or nothing. A compromise of some sort should have
been struck. A lot of the red tape could have been eliminated
while still preserving the more important safeguards that were
put in place to protect customers from fraud. This deregulation
is a prime example of throwing out the baby with the bath water.
The auction business, as it exists today, is going, going, gone.
Written
by Anne Benedetto, Auction House Talk
All Rights Reserved
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