The New "Super Drunk" Law Takes Effect this Halloween

This year, Halloween falls on a weekend.  If you are making party plans that include any heavy drinking, think twice before getting behind the wheel.

Persons caught operating a motor vehicle after bing-drinking, or with a high tolerance for alcohol, will face stiffer penalties beginning October 31, 2010.  If a driver's blood alcohol (BAC) is measured at more than .17 grams per 100 milliliters, (more than double the legal limit) then the new enhanced penalties will apply.

Those penalties include a one-year license suspension for first-time "super drunks"; an increase in the potential maximum jail sentence from 93-days to 180-days; higher fines; and mandatory use of an "ignition interlock" device.  The new law also features the longest alcohol rehabilitation treatment requirement on the books; one-year.

Once a conviction under this new law is abstracted to the Secretary of State, the driver's license will be suspended for one-year.  After a 45-day "hard suspension" where all driving privileges are suspended, a person can apply for restricted driving privileges for the balance of the year provided, however, that an " ignition interlock" device has been installed in the vehicle.  Under the old law, the hard suspension was only for 30-days and there was no interlock requirement.

Installing an interlock device will cost you about $50 and up to $100 per month to maintain.

Also, there are new penalties created under the Super Drunk law relative to operating an "interlocked" vehicle with a BAC of more than .025.  If a driver's probation is violated in this fashion, the Secretary of State will double the driver's license restriction by imposing a new 365-day suspension from the date of violation.

Beware if you lend your vehicle to a convicted Super Drunk on probation.  The new law requires impoundment and immobilization of any vehicle driven by a person under interlock restriction that is caught operating a vehicle without the device.  The owner of the vehicle is responsible for impoundment and storage costs.

Only time will tell whether this new law results in safer roadways.  There is no doubt that the tougher drunk driving laws implemented over the past 20-years have reduced (but not eliminated) drunk-driving related injuries and deaths.

One concern from within the trenches is how county prosecutors will use the new law in their charging decisions at district court.  Last year, the Oakland County Prosecutor stopped offering the lesser included offense of impaired driving to those charged with drunk driving.  This blog wonders whether a Super Drunk first offender will be offered a plea under the standard "Operating While Intoxicated" law, thereby avoiding the new interlock costs and restrictions as well as the other enhanced penalties.

If such plea reductions are not tendered under appropriate circumstances, the new law could result in many unnecessary jury trials.

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National Survey on CBAs

Dr. Tom Musil at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, is conducting a national survey on CBAs, and readers who have participated in CBAs should take a few minutes to fill it out. There hasn't been very much research on how CBAs are being implemented and monitored or on the views of people who are involved in the CBA process or represented by coalitions. And there are a lot of CBAs and CBA coalitions out there that haven't received extensive publicity or academic attention. The survey, which is confidential, should help to flesh out this information.

Complete the survey here.

An "Obstructionist Manifesto"

I've been very busy of late, and not following the news or posting as often as I would like. I apologize. The short version of the news in Buffalo is that Bass Pro, the long-proposed anchor tenant of the Canal Side project, pulled out, and CBA supporters are getting a lot of blame. (The mayor called them "obstructionists" and the Buffalo News called the CBA a "job killer.") Mark Goldman, a business owner who has written several books about Buffalo, wrote an "Obstructionist Manifesto" in response to the CBA-naysayers, and it's well worth considering. Some excerpts:

I believe that the Hippocratic Oath, “First do no harm,” while it applies to medicine, also applies to city planning.... As an obstructionist, I believe that all plans that cause harm must be stopped.

As an obstructionist, I believe that when a small group of tightly connected political insiders hijacks the city planning process, it must be stopped.

As an obstructionist, I believe that when these same insiders, for reasons unknown to most of us, are given tens of millions of dollars of the public’s money to spend without the public’s consent, they, too, must be stopped.

As an obstructionist, I believe that when that same group makes plans to turn our city’s splendid waterfront into a big-box retail mall surrounded by surface parking lots, it should be stopped.

As an obstructionist, I believe when the entrepreneurial instincts and desires of our people are stifled and undermined by the lavishing of tens of millions of public dollars on failing retail chains, that must be stopped. As an obstructionist, I believe that all these old and failed ways of planning for our waterfront must be swept aside.

As an obstructionist, I believe that unless and until city planning reflects the values, ideals and aspirations of the people who live and work here, it cannot work and therefore must be stopped. Only when public projects have the credibility of being created by the people directly involved in their use can they succeed.

...

As an obstructionist, I believe in a truly democratic and public planning process that is embraced by our whole community....

.... Only this kind of process can produce a plan that is real, authentic and sustainable. Once these plans and ideas have been clearly articulated and carefully studied, we should, following a real competition, turn them over to the best design professionals who would help us realize our waterfront vision.