DOES IT REALLY

DO THAT?

Montgomery County Office of Consumer

Protection Takes on a New Responsibility:

Labor Law

Another www.RobertDyer.net Exclusive!!!

If you tune in to CCM 6 on a regular basis, you are probably familiar with the Director of the Montgomery County Office of Consumer Protection, Eric Friedman. He is one of several "stars" of Channel 6 who receive quite a bit of screen time - but nobody can beat the screen time that our County Council and Executive get on this, and half-a-dozen other taxpayer-funded channels.

In a time of reduced revenues, Mr. Friedman and other departments have tried to appeal to the taxpayers via television, to make the case for the importance of what they provide to the community. Such a department can play a useful role, if that role is defined. For example, this office can help bring various local consumer scams to the attention of residents. At the same time, simply announcing recalls is duplicative of Federal product recall announcements, which anyone can easily subscribe to online.

But in a time of tight budgets, I was surprised to hear about a new role for the OCP: assisting domestic workers in court cases against their employers. This particular case was hastily brought forward, after the Gazette published an article revealing that no one had ever filed a complaint using the county's domestic worker protection law. After all of the taxpayer expense of legislating and promoting the law, it turned out that it was yet another County Council Solution-in-Search-of-a-Problem Law.

So now they've rounded up a customer. Let's allow the legal process to play out before passing judgement on the complaintant. Having said that, it is interesting to note that, according to the Gazette, the Montgomery County Police Department and the U.S. Justice Department both investigated the case, and declined to bring charges against the accused family. Again, I'm not here to defend the accused without having the case files in front of me. But what does it tell you about a case, when the highest law enforcement authorities in the county and the nation both say there's nothing there to pursue in court?

The real issue here is, what does a domestic worker complaint - a labor issue - have to do with an Office of Consumer Protection at any level? Who is the "consumer?" What was the "product" sold?

This makes no sense at all.

If the OCP has this much time, energy and financial resources to put toward non-consumer-protection related pursuits, is it not an indication that there are more budget cuts to be found in this department? This is a time to narrow activities to the most essential, not branch out on a pro-incumbent councilmember political quest at taxpayer expense. Such a case should be left to the appropriate authorities to investigate.

So when a puff piece featuring Mr. Friedman and Channel 4 consumer reporter Liz Crenshaw appeared the same week as this Gazette story... ...I just had to ask, regarding an Office of Consumer Protection entering into labor disputes, "Does it really do that?"