www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/630782,CST-EDT-edit01a.article
Toy risk isn't a game November 1, 2007 Worried about all those potentially hazardous toys coming in from China? Here's how worried your Consumer Product Safety Commission in Washington, DC, is: It has only one full-time employee testing toys. That ridiculous number is apparently OK with the agency's acting chairwoman Nancy Nord, who has riled legislators and consumer groups by campaigning against a Senate bill that would increase the consumer agency's federal funding so it can rebuild the agency's dramatically downsized staff.
But even as consumer worries escalate in this country following the recall of more than 20 million toys this year, Nord prefers a hands-off approach to keep manufacturers happy. For her, the consumer protection reform act --unanimously approved by a Senate committee yesterday -- is "unnecessary." "It's appalling that as someone who works with parents who have lost children, she would turn down added resources or powers to protect children," Nancy Cowles, executive director of Kids in Danger, a Chicago-based group, told us. "What's needed is an aggressive protector of consumer rights." In the absence of any federal laws prohibiting lead in toys, Illinois is fortunate to have the Lead Poisoning Prevention Act. And our Children's Product Safety Act, making up for more federal laxity, requires stores to post recall notices, pull faulty items off shelves and attempt to contact customers who have purchased them. But the state has actually had to fight the federal government's consumer agency to uphold those laws. For example, the Consumer Product Safety Commission tried unsuccessfully to prevent the removal of lead-treated vinyl bibs from local Wal-Mart stores. "We've ended up in a position where we have had to essentially become a state CPSC simply to protect children," Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan told us Wednesday. "It can take anywhere from three months to three years before public information is released about recalls. Kids are killed and injured because CPSC is in cahoots with manufacturers." The number of regulated products in the United States is soaring. Last year, imports had a price tag of more than $600 billion. But the agency's staff -- about 420 people -- is about half of what it was in the '80s. It's just the kind of law a federal "consumer" agency would want. Only a politics-first bureaucrat would find these provisions unnecessary. In pooh-poohing more money, Nord recalls the similar stance of another "small government" Bush appointee, deposed Veterans Affairs head Jim Nicholson. The Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal happened on Nicholson's watch. One can only fear what's in store for kids if Nord gets her way on toys.
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