Corrections or additions?
This article by Richard K. Rein was prepared for the May 14, 2003 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
On State Legislation
Every once in a while you hear about your government
doing something — or trying to do something — that makes you
happy to pay your taxes.
That’s the way I felt last week when I read the newspaper report of
the state Assembly considering a bill that would make it against the
law to drive a motor vehicle while simultaneously taking a call on
a hand-held cell phone or fiddling with your radio or CD player, putting
on make-up, reading the newspaper, wolfing down your bagel and coffee,
or tending to the wolfhound in the backseat.
If the legislation becomes law (a similar bill limited only to the
use of hand-held cell phones already has passed in the state Senate),
then the police blotter pages will have references to DWD along with
DWI — driving while distracted will be against the law as surely
as driving while intoxicated, though with lesser penalties.
Of course, whenever you hear anyone praising legislation at the state
level, you can bet that they have some personal axe to grind. I have
two:
No. 1. While I am as much opposed to reckless cell phoneuse as anyone else, I always remained silent on the subject becauseI was as much an offender as anyone. But then three weeks ago I stumbledinto Brookstone at MarketFair and found a hands-free cell phone cradlethat plugs into the cigaret lighter. It was just $30 and it works— it even turns the phone on automatically when you start thecar.Since I hardly ever eat in the car, and since the new law would beone more argument I could use when my kids start fighting in the backseat, I am more in favor of it than ever.No. 2. My other axe dates back to early this year, whenI began to notice the constant stream of faxes coming into our officefrom the state legislators. In the past I have always taken thesefaxes, crumpled them up, and used them to play a little office basketballas I walked past the nearest trash can. But for some reason one caughtmy eye that did not make me happy to pay my taxes.It was a fax from the Assembly Democrats and it announced that theAssembly’s state government committee had released a measure —sponsored by William D. Payne, Bonnie Watson Coleman, and Herb Conaway— that declared February to be “Black History Month” inNew Jersey. Now this seemed strange: February has been Black HistoryMonth for as long as this paper has been in business and our Februaryissues have been filled with noteworthy cultural events celebratingthe accomplishments and remembering the struggles of the African-Americancommunity.Even stranger was that the press release was dated February 13, andit specifically declared February, 2003, as Black History Month. Therelease noted that the measure still had to go to the Assembly Speaker,who would determine “if and when to post it for a floor vote.”What if it took more than 15 days to accomplish that, I wondered.The month would be over and presumably they would have to start allover again the next year.So I began to collect those faxes that come unrelentingly into ouroffice. Black History Month, relatively speaking, got short shriftfrom our legislators. The environment was the subject of many morepieces of legislation. One such measure would have allocated $11 millionin funding for open space acquisition (the land was located in partin the legislative district of the bill’s sponsors, Watson Colemanand Reed Gusciora).You might applaud the determination of your elected officials in goingafter those funds, but if you read beyond the headline of the pressrelease you discover that the money would be appropriated from notthe highway fund or the state legislators’ retirement fund or expenseallowance but rather from the Garden State Green Acres PreservationTrust Fund.And so it went. My stack of faxes began to cram an in-box I had allottedto them: Proposed legislation to designate March as Women’s HistoryMonth (dated March 3), to protect homeowners from toxic mold, to increasepenalties for home burglaries, to protect children from dangerousschool bus drivers, to study the role of the Civil Air Patrol in thestate’s homeland security plans, to encourage humane veal rearingpractices, to ensure warrant checks of inmates awaiting release fromprison, to create a “drug cost reduction study” commission,to implement a color-coding system to prevent incorrect medical gasesto be given to hospital patients, and — last but not least inmy pile — a bill to require all police, campus police, and sheriff’sofficers to undergo psychological testing before employment and everyfive years thereafter.Operating on the premise that you should not say anything about someoneunless you can say something nice, I didn’t know what to do with allthis onslaught of government protectionism. Then I saw that news aboutthe DWD offense: Thanks again, legislators, for all your good work.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
