Business View Magazine | April/May 2022

67 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 4 that allows the dealers to go outside of their county of origin to try to get those tags quicker from another county if they are willing to accept and process the transaction.” TADA also worked on legislation that would require insurance companies to pay for manufacturer parts, rather than aftermarket parts that may not be as effective. From a consumer perspective, if you put an aftermarket part that does not meet manufacturer specifications on a vehicle, you may be decreasing the value of that vehicle as well as making it less safe. The Texas legislature only meets every other year, so TADA’s legislative committee will continue talking about the priorities they see for the association and what they believe it should be focused on for the next legislative session in 2023. The actions TADA takes in the legislature are driven by the association’s legislative committee and board of directors. Whitehurst acknowledges, “We have a lot of multi-generational dealer families in the state that have ownership interest in dealerships. In all, there are about 1,400 dealerships in Texas ranging from large public organizations like Group 1, Berkshire Hathaway, AutoNation, and Lithia that have multiple dealerships, to family-run dealerships. We support them all. We operate a Texas Dealer Academy that focuses on developing younger dealers and providing them with a forum to build relationships and obtain insights and tools they can use in their daily work. At the end of the day, we’re going to work on issues that are important to our dealers and we take input from all of our dealer groups. That’s how we’re trying to create a collaborative atmosphere for sharing information on best practices and what’s going on at the grassroots level.” The onset of COVID caused the association to cancel a couple of their conferences and go virtual for networking, which the membership TEXAS AUTOMOB I LE DEALERS ASSOC I AT ION ( TADA)