Another Tax Hike
The precedent's been set; if you chisel money out of the unpopular, it's not really a tax. It's a "fee" charged against being in the wrong group, having the wrong pastime...
...or being in the wrong place at the wrong time after a drink too many:
Prosecutors' discretion should be eliminated in drunken-driving cases, and all drivers above the legal limit should be charged, Gov. Tim Pawlenty and a state senator said Tuesday.
"The governor's position is common sense. The governor thinks the law should be enforced the way it's written," said Brian McClung, spokesman for Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
The law is straightforward. Anyone driving with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent should be charged with driving while intoxicated, McClung said.
It's a perfect position for Pawlenty - he gets to sound tough on crime...
...while the more-rigorous enforcement of the very dubious .08 limit brings in more money.
I disagree completely with the .08 blood alcohol limit. An honest look at the statistics shows that the vast majority of problems with drunk drivers - arrests, accidents, fatalities - are associated with drivers with much higher blood alcohol levels.
No, make no mistake about it - the .08 limit was never instituted to increase safety; if the government were concerned with safety, they'd work harder to keep repeat offenders (people who are caught driving with blood alcohol levels in the mid-.1 range). The .08 limit gives police the discretion to suck more people into the DUI mill; they pull someone over for an expired tab or a broken taillight but no sign of erratic driving (because they were not driving erratically!), they smell a little beer, they spring into action...
...to the state and counties' immense material benefit.
In Minneapolis and St. Paul, prosecutorial discretion is the long-standing norm for drunken-driving cases -- up to a point. The new issue is the lower threshold for drunken driving in Minnesota. It dropped from 0.10 to 0.08 percent on Aug. 1.
When the threshold dropped, Minneapolis and other cities adjusted the point at which they would consider charging drivers with a lesser careless-driving offense instead of a drunken-driving offense.
In Minneapolis, that number dropped from 0.12 to 0.10 percent. Heffern said. In order to qualify for the careless-driving offense, three other conditions had to be met: The offense was the driver's first, there was no accident and the driver did not refuse a breath test.
I've
criticized the .08 standard for years, for mainly this reason; it has nothing to do with safety.
It has everything to do with criminalizing otherwise-safe levels of drinking (for MADD) and opening a new market (for government).
Posted by Mitch at
August 10, 2005 05:33 AM
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Prosecutorial discretion is what keeps the system moving. A typical pretrial or trial day for misdemeanors in a judge's courtroom involves 30-50 cases, or more. Discretion allows for some bargaining - you plead guilty to Careless, take a drunk class, pay a (big) fine, and we'll let it go (but we'll count it as a DWI if you get caught again). You have to give some incentive to get people with questionable cases to plead guilty - otherwise, if you have even a small chance of winning at trial, why not go for it if NOT going for it gets you no advantage?
We couldn't possibly finance or schedule all of those trials, without a huge bump in court funds.
This ain't gonna work. (But, it will increase the incomes of the DWI bar.)
Posted by: bobby_b at August 10, 2005 12:33 PMIt really is just an extension of the imbecilic War on Drugs.
Posted by: Will Allen at August 10, 2005 12:34 PMHow is this a “tax hike”?
I can see complaining about raising the excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol products as a tax* but fining someone for breaking the law – even a law that many of us find questionable – isn’t a tax, it’s a fine just like a speeding ticket or parking ticket.
I agree that it is probably a bad law and that we ought to concentrate more on repeat offenders and those who are most likely to cause accidents which injure, kill, and destroy property (most of whom are at 0.10 or above) but there is a danger of blurring the line between a tax and a fine or a fee even a fine that seems more about raising revenue that deterring bad behavior.
* Attempts by some to characterize the former as a “health impact fee” notwithstanding.
Posted by: Thorley Winston at August 10, 2005 12:55 PM