Twice this year President Obama has traveled to Elkhart County, Ind., to promote his economic policies, first to the city of Elkhart on February 9 and then the nearby community of Wakarusa on August 5. Northeastern Indiana makes for a good backdrop for speeches on the economy since Elkhart County has 16 percent unemployment, worst in the state.

The region has been especially hard hit because it’s the nation’s center of travel trailer manufacturing, with several major companies doing business there. High fuel prices followed by tight credit and then the recession have just hammered the industry.

With all due respect for the President’s policies, the area just got excellent news on the economic front last week from the U.S. court system. On September 24, a jury in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana, rejected the first of at least 30 lawsuits against trailer manufacturers who sold their products to FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

From The Associated Press:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal jury on Thursday rejected a New Orleans family’s claims that the government-issued trailer they lived in after Hurricane Katrina was defective and exposed them to dangerous [formaldehyde] fumes.

The jury decided that a trailer made by Gulf Stream Coach Inc. and occupied after the 2005 hurricane by Alana Alexander and her son, Christopher Cooper, 12, was not “unreasonably dangerous” in its construction.

The jury also concluded that Fluor Enterprises, which had a contract to install trailers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was not negligent in doing so. The government was not a defendant in this first of several “bellwether” trials.

Last year the House Oversight and Investigations Committee, then chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), held a hearing to drag the trailer manufacturers into the mud for supposedly dangerous manufacturing practices — charges the manufacturers have always forcefully rejected. The hearing built upon already one-sided media coverage that also served the interests of the trial lawyers suing the businesses.

This is just one jury verdict, but the message must be very, very encouraging to the people of Elkhart County, and especially those involved in the trailer industry: The companies built safe products that met consumers’ demand, and when responding to the Katrina disaster, they maintained their high standards.

Now that would be a good topic for a nationally televised speech.

Note: The RV trade industry publication/website “RV Business” did a thorough job covering the trial, and kudos to them.

• “Jury Clears Gulf Stream Coach in FEMA Trailer Case” (Sept. 25)
• “Federal Jury Deliberating Gulf Stream Coach Fate” (Sept. 24)
• “FEMA Suspected Sierra Club Bias in Gulf Stream Matter” (Sept. 23)
• “Gulf Stream Coach Inc. Trial Ends First Week” (Sept. 21)
• “Witness: Welding Fumes Caused FEMA Trailer Illness”(Sept. 17)
• “Lawyers Present Cases in First Day of FEMA Trial” (Sept. 15)
• “First Trial on FEMA Trailer Suit Starts Today” (Sept. 14)

President Obama mentioned a trailer manufacturer in his opening remarks today in Elkhart, Indiana, as he campaigned for the economic stimulus bill. Make sense. Elkhart is the center of the American RV, trailer and manufactured housing industry and they’ve all been hammered by the recession. Credit has dried up, gas prices soared last year, and people are buying fewer luxury items like the elaborate RVs. No wonder unemployment in Elkhart has more than tripled over the past year to 15.3 percent. (See the White House’s summary.)

At the same time, we wonder whether Elkhart isn’t suffering some from other politicians’ attacks against the RV industry, accusations that made headlines all through 2007, playing off and reinforcing litigation against local employers. You remember, the House Oversight Committee hearing last July on FEMA’s “toxic trailers?”

Here’s how a South Bend television station covered the hearing and anti-business accusations:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Four Elkhart County RV companies were put under the microscope on Capitol Hill Wednesday, as Congress works to figure out who’s to blame for toxic trailers provided by FEMA to victims of Hurricane Katrina….[snip]

Nappanee based Gulf Stream Coach Chairman Jim Shea, Goshen based Keystone RV President Ronald Fenech, Elkhart based Forest River President and C.E.O. Peter Liegl, and Middlebury based Pilgrim International Past President Steve Bennett were all on hand to testify, along with Centers for Disease Control Director of Environmental Hazards Dr. Michael McGeehin.

The group was sworn in before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee late Wednesday morning, and Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) wasted no time getting to the heart of the matter.

“What this hearing will show is that no one was looking out for the interests of the displaced families living in the FEMA trailers,” he said during his opening remarks. “FEMA failed to do its job, and trailer manufacturers took advantage of the situation. During today’s hearing, the trailer manufacturers will be asked some hard questions.”

Demonized in July, memorialized in February. Funny how that works.

It’s not just FEMA trailers that have excessive formaldehyde problems. So do Capitol Hill offices. While the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was preparing for this week’s hearing on problems with the Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers housing Hurricane Katrina victims, a Republican staff member on the committee decided to test the formaldehyde levels of select congressional offices.

Using a home test kit, staffer John Cuaderes and other staff discovered that the lounge room to the committee’s main hearing room has about the same high level of formaldehyde gas as many FEMA trailers.

From Rep. Tom Davis’ opening statement at the House Oversight Committee hearing on FEMA’s use of travel trailers after Katrina (our emphasis):

But the federal agency witnesses who might help explain this formaldehyde Tower of Babel aren’t here today.  FEMA is focusing all its attention on Midwest flood relief.  The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and HUD, also have information relevant to our discussion this morning.  But they were only invited to participate late last Thursday, as federal offices were closing for the holiday weekend.  Understandably, they declined to participate without more time to prepare. 

That tactic sure sounds familiar. Earlier this year, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) hammered the EPA over and over again for failing to provide thousands of documents to a “field briefing” — not a hearing — she was holding in Los Angeles by her deadline of January 7th. Of course, her request wasn’t made until December 20th, right before the Christmas break, making it next to impossible to meet. And when EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson couldn’t attend the event, she put an empty chair on stage in an effort to embarrass him. 

SOP, apparently.

Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) is the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, which yesterday held a hearing on environmental health and safety issues raised by the emergency housing of Katrina Hurricane survivors in travel trailers. Rather than engage in the outrage and “gotcha” politics that are the committee’s SOP — the hearing referred to “FEMA’s Toxic Trailers” — Davis gave a balanced opening statement that respected the fact that sometimes the world is complicated and people and businesses do their best in difficult circumstances. From his news release, “Government Confusion, not Industry Conspiracy“:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said today he hopes Wednesday’s hearing on formaldehyde levels in trailers distributed to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita won’t focus on a “majority-manufactured conspiracy theory among trailer makers” but rather on the dysfunction of government agencies that has led to and sustained most of the problems.“We saw first-hand the confusion that reigned on the Gulf Coast after the 2005 storms,” said Davis, who chaired the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina and produced a report highly critical of the government’s efforts.

“But we have to remember trailer manufacturers were pushed to their limits and did their best to help ill-prepared and disjointed government agencies respond to the disaster. Standards did not exist. Testing methods were not reliable. And occupants – already victimized by a 500-year storm – were caught in the middle.”

His prepared statement is here.

As we noted yesterday, the manufacturers who spoke did a stellar job in explaining the realities they faced, putting environmental issues in context, and describing the efforts they made to ensure their products’ safety. It’s nice to see that some members of the committee were receptive to the facts instead of promoting a pre-determined storyline.