Local dealers OK, but questions remain

Baker City’s new car dealerships escaped the purge that is supposed to save Chrysler and General Motors.

This is a good thing.

Between them, Chrysler dealer Powder River Motors and GM affiliate Baker Garage employ a couple dozen people and have a combined annual payroll of close to $1 million.

But although it seems that Baker City will emerge unscathed from the near-collapse of two of the nation’s biggest manufacturers, we remain worried about the nationwide ramifications of this debacle.

What we have, mainly, are questions. But the Obama administration, which is supposed to be overseeing this “restructuring” of the bankrupt companies, has offered little in the way of substantive answers.

Why, for instance, would either carmaker close dealerships that not only buy the companies’ products, but make a profit doing so?

We don’t have an economics degree among us, but driving a couple thousand of your best customers out of business seems to go against the basic principles of commerce.

American taxpayers certainly deserve a better explanation than they’ve been given, considering the government has handed billions of dollars of what used to be their money to the beleaguered companies.

Perhaps these draconian measures are necessary to save Chrysler and GM. If so, the effects — the loss of 100,000 jobs chief among them — though regrettable, would at least be justifiable.

So far, though, even under the scrutiny of Congress, neither Obama’s car team nor company executives has offered what seems to us a reasonable explanation for the dealership closings.

We’re also troubled by the administration’s apparent disdain for addressing one of the root causes for the Chrysler and GM disaster: unsustainable labor contracts with the United Auto Workers union.

Instead, the union now controls about 65 percent of Chrysler and 17fi percent of GM.

We hope those ownership stakes will force union officials and members to rethink their decades-old positions and make the concessions that likely are required if GM and Chrysler are to survive bankruptcy.

That survival, though, will be of little consolation to more than 2,000 car dealers.

They should continue to demand answers to the questions that puzzle consumers and Congress.

We’ll be waiting, too.