A drunk driver with a blood alcohol level of nearly thrice the legal limit will have to spend 45 consecutive days in jail and pay at least $500 in fines, even when convicted for the first time, under a bill sent to the Governor’s Office May 15.
Not only that, anyone convicted of this type of extreme DUI will have to install an ignition interlock device or IID for one and a half years.
For all first-time DUI offenders, the bill requires equipping the vehicles they operate with the interlock for a year. An ignition interlock is a device that drivers blow into to measure the alcohol level on their breath; the car will not start if they are over a specific level.
If signed into law, the measure, which melds the interlock provision with the creation of a new set of penalties for the drunkest of drivers, would make Arizona’s DUI laws among the toughest in the nation.
The Web site www.1800duilaws.com places the cost of installation and maintenance of an ignition interlock device at about $60 a month.
Backers of the IID provision cite a similar measure in New Mexico, which has noted a significant drop in DUI-related fatalities since its implementation. Critics argue that the interlock is inappropriate for first-time DUI offenders and that as such, the bill goes too far, they say.
For a while the fate of S1029 was uncertain. Sen. Jim Waring, R-7, the bill’s author, said he was unsure whether there would be enough support to get the bill as amended through in his chamber and sent to the governor.
The original bill created a new class of penalties for those with a blood-alcohol level of 0.20 and above.
Currently, a person commits extreme DUI by having a level of 0.15. Also, the offender faces 30 days of jail time. The judge, however, may suspend 20 of these days.
The legal blood-alcohol limit is 0.08.
Ignition lock devices added to bill
The House amended the bill and put in place the IID provision, authored by Rep. David Schapira, D-17.
Waring had originally refused to concur with the House changes so he could fix a portion of the underlying bill that apparently did not meld with other DUI measures that have either moved or were moving in the Legislature. He later said the problem could be fixed by amending a measure by a colleague that also deals with the subject.
He also did not want to court failure because of the Schapira amendment. Some had indicated they would not vote for the bill with the IID provision, according to Waring.
In short, he was looking for a possible compromise. Waring made clear that he had no problem with the amendment. His only concern was getting the bill through.
But more than two weeks passed and the House still had not appointed representatives to a conference committee, where a small group of lawmakers from each chamber usually try to hammer out an agreement and reconcile two versions of a bill.
One complication led to another. Waring said he could not find representatives that would agree on a compromise.
Waring refused to blame House Speaker Jim Weiers for holding off the appointment of conferees. For one, the speaker was busy with the budget, he reckoned. He could not fault Weiers for trying to get people to agree before assigning the conferees, he said.
Consensus proves a tall order
But here was the caveat: It was hard to get an agreement beforehand when one did not know who exactly to negotiate with, according to Waring.
Schapira, who was also open to a compromise, was blunt. He suggested that lobbyists might have a hand in the delay.
House spokesperson Barrett Marson said the idea was to get an agreement —that is, to find language that all sides could agree on — before going to the conference committee. A lot of people were involved in the negotiations, he said.
For several weeks, Schapira could be seen on the Senate floor, conferring with Waring. Waring, Schapira and Sen. Linda Gray, R-10, had apparently divided the task of getting senators’ support.
At one time, Waring unveiled possible compromise language regarding the Schapira amendment. But he was clearly getting frustrated. At another time, he said he would just have to give up on the possibility of a compromise, concur with the House changes, and bring the bill to a vote — no more conference committee.
“I think that in general folks were just kind of frustrated,” Schapira said, adding he surmised that Waring had come to the conclusion that no conferees were ever going to be appointed.
“Basically it just came time to say, look, is the bill flawed? And the answer is no,” he said, adding many of them were willing to come to a compromise.
The way Waring put it, bringing the bill to a vote entailed some risk.
“Realistically you are rolling the dice when you do that. You lose everything when it fails,” he said.
Before the final reading, Waring had confirmed 17 — even 18 — “yes” votes. For him, it was too close for comfort. If two or three people switched, the bill could end up nowhere. In the end, 26 senators backed the bill.
Only two did not — Minority Leader Marsha Arzberger and Assistant Minority Leader Jorge Luis Garcia, D-27.
Garcia thought the interlock provision was an inappropriate penalty, especially for first-time DUI offenders.
Garcia: ‘I think it went too far.’
“I couldn’t accept it. I think it went too far,” he said.
Arzberger believed the 0.20 provision was just another restriction that would put more people in jail, take away judges’ discretion, but not really solve the problem of drunk driving.
“I mean they’re drunk at the level it is now,” she said.
“The point is we keep passing these DUI laws. We keep filling up the prisons. That doesn’t really stop the drunk drivers. They are stopped at lower level or should be,” she said.
Incarcerating people costs a lot of money, she also pointed out.
There is an ongoing debate whether rehabilitation or longer incarceration and stiffer fines is the best strategy to deal with drunk drivers.
Schapira thinks both should be employed.
“It doesn’t go too far. First-time offenders, like any other DUI offenders, are breaking the law. They are driving on the road endangering the lives of the people around them,” Schapira said, defending his amendment.
Shifting gears, he said: “I think that the penalties as far as fines and prison time are already pretty stiff. But what this amendment does is that it has us think outside the box. It has us take a different approach as far as using these IIDs. And I think prevention also is a way of us working outside the box instead of just continuing to increase the fines and jail time.”
He cited the case of New Mexico, which has significantly lowered its drunk-driving related fatalities after implementing a similar measure. “I think this is precisely what the state of Arizona needs,” he said.
Waring looks toward Europe, particularly the Scandinavian countries, for examples of very tough yet very effective DUI laws.
Scandinavian countries, he said, have “zero tolerance” for drunk drivers. The result? “They have zero problem. They don’t put up with this nonsense,” he said.
In the U.S., the problem has created a sadly predictable pattern. People drink again and again and then drive — and then hurt or worse, kill someone, Waring said.
“We go to do something,” he said. “I think we should make the up front cost for the perpetrators as heavy as possible. And I think we’ve done that now.”