Ritchie Bros. employs 15 full-time and 31 part-time workers here, has an annual payroll of $1.2 million and contributes more than $550,000 annually to state and local government revenues.
The new license was included in the $6.8 billion state transportation budget passed May 30 and was the result of a four-year effort to address what Gary Caufield, senior director of legal services for Ritchie Bros., called “a gray area between auction law and Ohio automobile dealer law.”
“Companies like Ritchie Brothers didn’t exist” when earlier Ohio laws were written, he said. Now, “this is the main way heavy equipment changes hands,” and an update was necessary.
The license was created with the help of Clark County’s state representatives and in negotiations with affected interest groups, including the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association (OADA).
When Ritchie Bros. built its $20 million facility in South Vienna in 2007, the OADA objected to the company’s sale of pickup trucks and cars along with heavy equipment.
The company said the smaller vehicles generate less than 3.5 percent of its South Vienna business, but it handles them as a service to companies that sell it other larger equipment in lots at the same time.
The new legislation allows Ritchie Bros. to continue the sales but requires that it pay sales tax.
Although the licensing legislation passed without objection from the automobile dealers, some auctioneers since have said they feared the new license would take away their right to sell heavy equipment in smaller auctions.
Both Ritchie Bros. and Clark County legislators state Rep. Ross McGregor and state Sen. Chris Widener said that’s not the case and that attorneys from Ohio’s Legislative Service Commission agree.
To allay auctioneers’ concerns, Widener submitted language in the state’s operating budget to address the issue. He said he expects it to be adopted with the budget Tuesday.
Critics’ suspicions about the license were raised by language in the law tailored to Ritchie Bros. operation.
Caufield said Ritchie Bros. did not seek those restrictions and said they were included at the insistence of the OADA.
The language appears to be a way of creating a window wide enough to allow Ritchie Bros. to continue its operations but no wider.
Ritchie Bros. spokesmen said the company might have left Ohio had a solution to the legal quandary not been found.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368.
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