Last week, after Gov. Rick Snyder, in his State of the State speech, knocked the wind out of grocery shoppers by proposing repeal of the item-pricing/scanner law, I put a call in to the champion of the law, Frank J. Kelley.
Kelley, who was Michigan’s attorney general from 1961 through 1998, shocked me by saying that maybe, after all, it was time to dump the law, conceding the possibility that technology has significantly improved the accuracy and reliability of retail scanners.
Well, then talk surfaced about the connection between Kelley’s firm — Kelley Cawthorne — and Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, a client of the legal/government relations consulting firm, once paid a $780,000 settlement for item-pricing violations. Like most retailers, Wal-Mart, it’s safe to say, would love to see the item-pricing law disappear.
So, I rang up Kelley on Monday and asked him if the Wal-Mart connection might be influencing his change of heart.
No way, Kelley said, adding that he, personally, had never exchanged a word with anybody from Wal-Mart.
“Anybody who knows me knows I don’t change my mind for a buck,” he added.
