No Christmas wrapping on toy safety reforms

by Linnea Kirgan, January 2nd, 2008, 6:49 am

Looks like the gift that many parents and consumer groups desired will be arriving a little late.

After a tumultuous 2007, with more than 20 million toy recalls from major industry players including Mattel and RC2, many were looking to Congress to wrap up toy safety reform bills with a pretty bow by the end of the year. Progress was made by both the House and the Senate, each of which held intensive hearings on the subject earlier this fall, but final decisions will not come until early 2008.

In mid-December, the House unanimously (407-0) passed a toy safety reform bill that would reduce lead paint in kids’ toys to trace amounts, require independent testing of toys, improve toy tracking, and boost funding for the Consumer Product Safety Commission (to $100 million by 2011) along with an additional $20 million to overhaul the CPSC’s toy testing facility.  The House bill will also hike maximum penalties for disobeying the CPSC from $1.25 million to $10 million. (Still, some say more action is needed to give the CPSC more power to control imports, such as halting unsafe imports at their port of entry and improving border inspections.)

As part of an appropriations bill passed by the Senate in December, the CPSC will receive $70 million (an increase of $17 million from its 2007 budget, and its biggest increase in three decades). The bill also bans industry-sponsored travel for CPSC members. (CPSC staffers admitted recently to traveling on manufacturers’ dimes on a number of trips.)

This all sounds very promising, except for the fact that a Senate committee had also passed its own toy safety reform bill back in October. So, there are two toy safety reform bills floating around Congress, which could prove tricky as the bills will have to be reconciled.

Still, the Washington Post reports that Senator Mark Pryor, who sponsored the Senate’s version of the bill, said that he was close to a bi-partisan compromise to allow the bill to go forward in early 2008. (His bill proposes similar changes to the House bill, but also has several provisions that irk the toy industry such as raising civil penalties to $100 million and giving state attorneys the right to collect the fines.)

The faster Congress moves, the sooner toy makers will be spurred to take action. Manufacturers are already working on next year’s slate of toys and will flip the switch on Christmas 2008’s toy production sometime next spring. The longer action is delayed, the more toys make it into the marketplace without better safeguards in place.