WASHINGTON (AP) — Can Mary Barra fix General Motors?
That’s
likely to be the underlying theme of many of the questions thrown at
the automaker’s CEO when she’s in front of Congress for a second time
Wednesday. A House subcommittee is investigating GM’s mishandled recall
of millions of small cars for a deadly defect in ignition switches.
Lawmakers
have signaled that they’ll ask Barra whether more significant safety
problems could be lurking within GM, and about the actions she’s taking
to make safety a priority at the nation’s biggest automaker.
Following
the small car recall, Barra authorized an internal investigation of the
matter and a companywide safety review. The investigation found that a
pattern of incompetence and neglect within GM were to blame for the
delay. GM has issued 44 recalls this year that cover almost 18 million
cars in the U.S. in an effort to convince customers that it’s focused on
safety. It says more are possible.
Anton Valukas, the former
federal prosecutor who led GM’s internal investigation, will also appear
before the subcommittee. Panel members will likely ask Valukas to
explain any differences in the findings of their investigation and his.
Here are some other questions lawmakers are likely to ask Barra and Valukas:
BARRA
—Q: How does GM plan to change the cumbersome corporate culture laid bare by Valukas’s report?
GM
has linked the ignition-switch flaw to more than 50 crashes and at
least 13 deaths. Valukas’ investigation found that a pattern of
incompetence and neglect within GM kept the problem concealed for 11
years. Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado, the senior Democrat on the Energy
and Commerce investigative subcommittee, said this week she wants to
know "what are they going to do to break this culture." Barra has
acknowledged that the report drew a "deeply troubling" portrait of GM as
an organization. According to her prepared remarks, Barra will tell the
hearing that GM has restructured its process for making safety
decisions "to raise it to the highest levels of the company," among a
number of changes.
—Q: How will GM compensate victims of crashes linked to the faulty switches?
Barra
says the company expects to begin processing victims’ claims for
compensation by Aug. 1. Lawmakers want details. GM has hired attorney
Kenneth Feinberg to put a plan in place; he’ll rule on who is eligible
to receive compensation and will set the amounts. More than 300 claims
have been filed. Feinberg has presided over compensation plans for the
victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the 2010 BP oil spill in the
Gulf of Mexico and other disasters.
—Q: Could the seeds of an even wider problem be lurking within GM’s corporate structure?
Barra
said at GM’s annual shareholders meeting last week that a thorough
review of the company’s safety issues is nearly complete and hasn’t
turned up any other serious problems. She called the ignition-switch
debacle a "unique series of mistakes" made by the company over many
years. The news Monday of another huge recall for a problem similar to
the ignition-switch defect has fueled lawmakers’ skepticism. "This
latest recall raises even more questions about just how pervasive safety
problems are at GM," Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the Energy
and Commerce Committee, said.
VALUKAS
—Q: The question of a
deep-rooted corporate weakness at GM potentially sowing the seeds of a
wider problem also could be one for Valukas to address.
He and his
team know GM thoroughly after interviewing 230 employees and reviewing
41 million documents. Valukas will tell the hearing that a single
engineer set off the ignition-switch problems by approving switches that
didn’t meet GM specifications. He acknowledges that his report leaves
open some questions, notably: whether there was civil and criminal
culpability; whether GM will make the right decisions to stop this from
happening again; and what specific crashes were caused by the ignition
switch problem.
—Q: Do the actions that GM has taken so far appear sufficient?
In
addition to making organizational changes, the company forced out 15
employees and disciplined five others for their role in the
ignition-switch debacle. More than half the 15 were senior legal and
engineering executives who failed to disclose the defect and were part
of a "pattern of incompetence," according to Barra. The Justice
Department likely will use Valukas’s findings as a "road map" for
questions and employees to pursue in its criminal investigation.
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AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.