The public turned out in Madison Wednesday to support yet another bill to make first-offense OWI in Wisconsin a misdemeanor.
It's a safe bet that the bill and anything else remotely in the public interest will die in committee, because too many Wisconsin legislators are too beholden to the state's various hospitality and alcohol lobbies, and too fearful of being called a party-pooper.
Related efforts have generally met with failure.
So it was not surprising to see legislators on the evening news default into their predictably phony hand wringing over what it would cost to have convicted offenders to sit for a few days, separated from their car keys , where they could count their blessings for not having killed themselves or someone else when caught having chosen to drink and drive.
This is the same 'cost-conscious' Legislature which has just committed a record Wisconsin subsidy to a Taiwan-based TV screen manufacturer to build (perhaps) some products on rural Wisconsin farmland now being made more accessible through a quarter of a billion dollars in new highway spending.
How about dedicating a fraction of that kind of money to making the roads we already have a little safer by taking away the first-offense-OWI-get-out-of-jail-free card that comes attached to every State of Wisconsin driver's license?
Like it's a state birthright to endanger the public safety - - a pass we don't automatically grant to people by for their first-time reckless discharge of a firearm.
You don't hear legislators fretting over what a criminal prosecution might do the future of a high school student caught posting a threat on anInstgramaccount or bathroom wall.
Commonsense treatment of OWI as a menace to community traffic safety, combined with more education and broader access to treatment for abusive drinking, would be the most cost-effective approach of all, because you can't put a price on lives saved down the road.
Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) wrote Senate Bill 9, which would make a first offense OWI a misdemeanor. "We are the only state in the country that has the first offense drunken driving as a parking ticket," said Sen. Darling.
It's a safe bet that the bill and anything else remotely in the public interest will die in committee, because too many Wisconsin legislators are too beholden to the state's various hospitality and alcohol lobbies, and too fearful of being called a party-pooper.Related efforts have generally met with failure.
So it was not surprising to see legislators on the evening news default into their predictably phony hand wringing over what it would cost to have convicted offenders to sit for a few days, separated from their car keys , where they could count their blessings for not having killed themselves or someone else when caught having chosen to drink and drive.
This is the same 'cost-conscious' Legislature which has just committed a record Wisconsin subsidy to a Taiwan-based TV screen manufacturer to build (perhaps) some products on rural Wisconsin farmland now being made more accessible through a quarter of a billion dollars in new highway spending.
How about dedicating a fraction of that kind of money to making the roads we already have a little safer by taking away the first-offense-OWI-get-out-of-jail-free card that comes attached to every State of Wisconsin driver's license?
Like it's a state birthright to endanger the public safety - - a pass we don't automatically grant to people by for their first-time reckless discharge of a firearm.
You don't hear legislators fretting over what a criminal prosecution might do the future of a high school student caught posting a threat on anInstgramaccount or bathroom wall.
Commonsense treatment of OWI as a menace to community traffic safety, combined with more education and broader access to treatment for abusive drinking, would be the most cost-effective approach of all, because you can't put a price on lives saved down the road.
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