Felony DUI bill stalls in committee
OLYMPIA – A local lawmaker’s push to toughen penalties for chronic drunken drivers screeched to a halt Monday amid Democratic concerns over the price of incarcerating hundreds more people.
“This really floored me,” said Rep. John Ahern, R-Spokane. “What’s a life worth?”
Ahern has spent several years trying to persuade fellow lawmakers to make repeat drunken or drugged driving a felony. Under his House Bill 3076, a fourth DUI in seven years could be a felony, making a longer stay in state prison likely. As things stand now, Ahern says, DUIs – no matter how many – can be only gross misdemeanors.
On Monday, he said, House budget chairwoman Rep. Helen Sommers told him the price of his solution is too high. A fiscal analysis completed on Sunday predicted the bill would add nearly 1,200 more inmates to state prisons within three years. Since Washington is already paying other states to house hundreds of its inmates, an additional 1,200 prisoners would mean building yet another state prison, analysts say. And a new prison, Ahern said, would cost about $180 million.
Sommers, D-Seattle, couldn’t be reached for comment Monday.
Ahern argues that the cost should be measured against the 222 fatalities caused by drunken or drugged drivers in Washington in 2004. Toughening the law, he said, would get the worst offenders off the road, behind bars, and into treatment.
“How many more people have to die because this bill was just too expensive?” he said.
A similar bill was introduced in the Legislature’s other chamber by Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, but no hearing was held. The cutoff for financial bills to clear their first committee is 5 p.m. today.
“If (the Senate bill) hasn’t moved yet, it’s not going to go anywhere,” said Sen. Brad Benson, R-Spokane, another longtime proponent of a felony DUI bill.
“We’ll keep doing it,” Benson said. “It’s going to take one of two things to happen. A repeat-offender DUI will kill a bunch of people; then the Democrats will have to” pass the bill. “Politically, there will be no standing in the way.”
The second thing, he said, would be for Republicans to regain majority control of the House or Senate.
Benson, citing a series of tough-on-crime bills in the mid-1990s, said lawmakers have good reason to be skeptical of cost predictions by the Department of Corrections. In most cases, he said, “we never got anywhere close to the numbers they were coming up with.”
Ahern said he’ll try to persuade House Speaker Frank Chopp to allow a vote on the bill.
Even if the bill dies again this year, Benson said, lawmakers will try to pass felony DUI again next year.
“It’s going to happen eventually,” Benson said. “The question is when.”