Weekly Briefing

Lawmakers return to Raleigh for an inexplicable special session

State legislators return to Raleigh today for one of the strangest special sessions in the history of North Carolina. Just over a month after adjourning the 2007-'08 session for good and heading home to prepare for 2009, lawmakers are now rushing back from all over the country to consider overriding a gubernatorial veto of an ill-conceived bill to, of all things, expand the width of boats that can be towed at will on the state highways.

Here is what Governor Easley said last week when he vetoed the bill:

"House Bill 2167 allows extremely large boats as wide as 9-1/2 feet to be towed on any state road at anytime, including night time, any day of the week, without a permit as required by all other states from Texas to Virginia.  This bill would also allow a blood alcohol level of .08, double that allowed by commercial vehicles of smaller size.

I sincerely believe that this bill puts families at a risk on the highways and would result in death or serious injury.  North Carolina has 60,000 miles of narrow two lane roads that cannot accommodate the 9-1/2 foot width and maintains roughly 1,000 bridges 18-feet wide or less, which would require a 9-1/2 foot boat to cross the center line in violation of N.C.G.S. 20-146, and into oncoming traffic.  Further, if two 9-1/2 foot boats were to meet on an 18-foot strip of road or bridge it would be physically impossible to escape a collision.

I am deeply concerned about 9-1/2 foot boats meeting a school bus.  The buses travel primarily on rural roads and often in the dark during early morning and early evening hours.

I encourage the General Assembly to let boat haulers use the current law of permitting for the rest of this season and then have the legislature take up this issue in January when there is time to thoughtfully avoid the consequences of this bill.

Therefore, I veto the bill."

To prove the points outlined in the Governor's message, the state Highway Patrol staged a demonstration this week to show what would happen if boats as wide as the bill would permit were allowed to travel down a typical narrow road. You can watch a video news report on the demonstration by clicking here. It makes abundantly clear that the margins of error for those transporting big boats are already often a matter of inches. Needless to say, the patrolmen didn't take the next obvious step in the demonstration process - that is, attempting to negotiate the obstacle course with a blood alcohol level of as high 0.8, as the bill would allow.

 According to Secretary of Crime Control and Public Safety, Bryan Beatty, the matter is pretty simple:

"If this bill becomes law, allowing these over-width boats to travel on our highways and roads at night, someone's husband, someone's wife, someone's child will be killed. And the Governor and I don't want to be a part of that."

Full speed ahead?

Despite this simple and powerful message, proponents of the big boats bill are unmoved. They are pushing full speed ahead for a complete veto override that would enact the new law immediately, i.e. today.  This means, apparently, that the big boats could be traveling on state highways legally without a permit as early as this afternoon.

Just a few days ago, corporate interests behind the bill hired controversial contract lobbyist Joe McClees to lobby on behalf of the override. As was noted on The Progressive Pulse last week, McClees has, through the years, represented a number of gun and hunting groups (including the NRA and the firearms dealers), check cashers, high-cost lenders, smokeless tobacco interests and the "wastewater industry." According to a report in this morning's edition of The Insider, he was already actively lobbying lawmakers yesterday.

Why the supporters of the bill are in such an urgent hurry to make the measure law today, rather than taking the time to deal with it next January (as the Governor and Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand have suggested) is a bit of a mystery. According to WUNC radio's Laura Leslie, who reported on the matter on her blog last week, the matter could be a simple matter of appeasing a powerful campaign contributor and boat manufacturer named Reggie Fountain:

"Fountain's company, Fountain Powerboats, builds big luxury boats, precisely the kind current law makes it difficult to tow on NC roads.  His firm's been the apple of eastern NC economic developers' eye for the last few years. Just today, the local outlet Washington Daily News had a glowing article on a Fountain expansion plan that won a JDIG grant worth $2.5M this week.

Turns out Fountain's an up-and coming player on the Dems' side of the political money game. Not that he's a novice political donor — he isn't — but up till last year, much of his largesse was aimed across the aisle….

SBOE campaign finance records show Fountain started paying a lot more attention to Dems this year. In the past, he'd given House bill sponsor Arthur Williams a little money - $1000 each in 2003 and 2006. He'd also been a smallish contributor to Senate Pro Tem Marc Basnight, donating $5200 over five years from 2002 to 2006.  But then he got serious. Campaign records show he gave Basnight another $5000 - almost doubling his prior five-year total - between 12/07 and 5/06.

This is NOT proof of malfeasance. Business owners have right to lobby like everyone else.  And giving a campaign donation doesn't, in itself, constitute an attempt to buy influence any more than accepting one constitutes an agreement to sell it.  But you can't help but wonder about the timing.  Fountain's monetary interest in Basnight peaked just before a session that yielded legislation favorable to Fountain's business - the big boat bill.  And when the Governor vetoed the bill, Basnight was one of the first to say lawmakers should override it.  That's some coincidence."

Today's outlook

What will actually happen today is anyone's guess. Unlike many other controversial issues, there really isn't a private highway safety advocacy group to counteract the industry supporters by lobbying in favor of the veto. Add to this the fact that many members may not make it back to Raleigh on such short notice and it could be a bit of strange and unpredictable day on Jones Street.

While media reports indicate that the Governor's office is attempting to negotiate a compromise with the bill supporters, as of the last reports this morning, it was not at all clear that negotiations will succeed. Unfortunately, it appears that in many ways the debate has come to be more about the power relationship between a lame duck Governor and a General Assembly feeling its oats than the safety of state highways and the lives of innocent people that are likely at risk.

Let's hope that cooler (and saner) heads prevail. Boat manufacturing and recreation are certainly important industries in North Carolina. No one wants to cause either of them undue harm. But today's rush to override the sincere and fact-driven actions of the Governor and his administration on a matter of public safety are simply out-of-character for a General Assembly that has done much to improve its performance over the last two years - both with respect to actual legislative output and in cleansing the influence peddling stain from the Jim Black years. They can do better and the drivers and passengers on our highways deserve it.          

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 8:27 am and is filed under Weekly Briefing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.