Sen. Jim Waring, R-7, successfully convinced his colleagues today to give his measure requiring the most intoxicated drivers to serve 30 full days in jail a second look.
An amendment watered down that bill two weeks ago and Waring threatened to abandon the legislation.
This week the Senate transportation committee approved his move to place the original content of that bill onto another bill, S1252.
Sen. Rebecca Rios, D-23, had planned to amend S1252. Hers is similar amendment that Sen. Jorge Luis Garcia, D-27, successfully offered to the original drunken-driving bill, S1026. Garcia’s amendment would give an extreme DUI offender a choice to go to a rehab center or go to jail.
But after hearing testimonies, Rios decided not to push her amendment.
“I hope that means that they won’t be offering it on the floor and that we won’t hear about that amendment again,” Waring said.
One lobbyist said the testimony of a mother who lost a daughter in an accident involving a chronic drunk driver might have changed her mind.
“I think you got to Sen. Rios,” the lobbyist told the mother, Molly Steffens, after the bill sailed through at committee level.
During the hearing, Rios said she does not think anyone could be found supporting drunk drivers; certainly not her, she said.
She said she would continue to support the measure in its current form, but she added that society, knowing it would have to go back to the issue of drunk driving time and again, must look at the problem “from all angles.”
“Are we looking at it all sides, at a wide angle?” she said.
“My intent is not to say, ‘You know what, you can go to treatment and you don’t have to sit in jail.’ It is to say, as a society, what are we doing to address this horrible problem at all different angles? And then again my intent in hearing testimonies on this amendment is simply to bring that issue to light and not to let this folks off…,” she added.