Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an article on the truck seat belt bill, HB 1237, entitled Deal requiring truck seat belts goes to House. As I understood it, the major hang up between the House and Senate was whether to alter the local road funding formula. Should the money be doled out based on a county’s ratio of cars to the state’s total cars, or should it be doled out based on a county’s ratio of cars & trucks to the state’s total cars & trucks. The Senate version left it at the former while the House version contained the latter. So, just really, really generally – Senate version favors urban areas whereas the House version favors rural areas.
However, according to Ms. Kelly’s article the four conferees (conferees usually being made up representatives of both parties from each chamber) agreed on the Senate version with a small change. The change involves the extra federal money Indiana would receive if it finally eliminates the truck seat belt loophole. The conference committee version of the bill would prohibit using that extra money on safety checkpoints set up to catch Hoosiers without seat belts. The local road fund formula would remain cars only.
Strikes me as odd that the checkpoint language would be enough to get the thing passed. The legislators representing areas with more trucks seem likely to take the most heat from this legislation. Consequently, it seems like they would really like to bring home more money to their counties in return.
[tags]HB1237-2007, seat belts[/tags]
Doug,
Thanks for the update.Like Senator Rogers I thought the lack of road funding formula change is what was holding this bill back not seatbelt check points.I guess we’ll see.