The Associated Press has an article reviewing events at the State House today under the headline House fails to pass seat belt bill. Under review was HB 1237 which amends the seat belt laws to require all passengers, not just front seat passengers, of most vehicles — no exemption for pickup trucks and truck-plated SUVs, for example. The original house version also amended the local road funding formula. As I understand it, currently pickup trucks are not included in the road formula — a county pretty much gets a chunk of the road fund in proportion to the number of cars it has registered compared to the total number of cars in the state. The House version would have modified that to make the ratio that of pickup trucks + cars compared to the pickup trucks & cars in the state. Generally, such a change would presumably mean that rural counties would get a greater share of the road fund and urban counties a lesser share since a greater percentage of rural drivers tend to drive pickup trucks. (At least that’s the presumption — I don’t know what the breakdown really is.) The Senate passed the seat belt provisions, but took out the road funding provisions.
Today, one of the authors, Peggy Welch, offered the bill up to the House to see if it would concur with the Senate amendments. The House voted 34 to 65 against. So, it looks like differences either need to be hammered out in the conference committee or the bill will be dead. Good luck with that. Messing with the funding formula is always tough sledding.
Not surprising this bill has not passed.It lost a huge amount of support from the first go around when the House passed their version.Lawmakers from our area catch heat over this anyway and the editorial from the Washington Times Hearld a few weeks ago condeming the Senate for removing the changes in the road funding formula part of this bill doesn’t help in our area either.
The Indy Star article a while back said if the bill passed with the new formula Marion county would lose apprx $628,000 this is why I thought there was a good chance the Senate would strip this part of the bill out.
Look if the safety crowd wants this bill to pass give the rural areas the money we’ve been getting screwed out of all these years.Just about everyone has a pickup around here.Now the last time I checked my pickup was what I would call a vehicle and should be counted as such.It is very hard for a rural lawmaker to come back home having voted for a seatbelt law for trucks and truck plated vehicles without a change in the road funding formula.
I remember a few weeks ago watching Meet Your Lawmakers on PBS and this bill was brought up and the first question from the audience and over the phone and email was “Are you going to change the road funding formula to start counting our trucks?”Case closed for now I guess unless a compromise is worked out.
I always wear my seat belt. It is foolish and irresponsible not do do so. It should not, however, be mandated by state government.
However, that wasn’t really the question at issue. The state has already mandated seat belts. The question is whether a seat belt distinction between trucks and cars makes any sense. I’m in the “makes no sense” camp.