March 5, 2005

Veto the hauling bill

Act for the people, not Leonard Lawson

Here's one to add to the list of quaint ideas: Government of the people, by the people, for the people.

The Kentucky Senate has taken pains this week to prove that Abraham Lincoln's famous phrase is clearly outdated.

By using virtually every possible form of trickery and legislative maneuvering and refusing to hear the concerns of citizens, the Senate has managed to push along a deeply flawed bill that would endanger the lives of many Kentuckians and cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.

The bill would let trucks blunder through cities and towns carrying 60 tons of gravel, sand, rock or whatever, 50 percent more than the current limit.

Gov. Ernie Fletcher must veto this bill. To do otherwise -- including letting it become law without signing it -- would be an abdication of the promises he has made to Kentuckians and the trust they have given him.

Some hastily drawn amendments have been offered to make the bill more acceptable, but they raise as many questions as they answer.

A sense of haste or urgency has marked this bill's path as it has traveled quickly through this session, apparently greased by highway contractor Leonard Lawson's tens of thousands of dollars of contributions to politicians.

Indeed, it takes special tactics to pass a bill that would benefit a very few (no one seems to have claimed otherwise) while increasing the number of hugely overburdened trucks and the miles of road they would be allowed to travel.

It would certainly cause more traffic deaths and injuries while tearing up roads. The trucking and coal industry organizations are neutral on it while organizations representing counties, cities and just plain citizens are against it.

The sponsor, Rep. Howard Cornett, R-Whitesburg, has had to work hard from the beginning. First, he put pressure on legislative analysts to downplay the cost of the bill.

Initially, in a fiscal note attached to it, they estimated the road and bridge repair it would entail would be $385 million in the first year and $25 million annually thereafter. After Cornett's complaints, the analysis changed to a cost of $15.3 million a year.

The bill passed through the House in part because Cornett misrepresented it as benefiting the coal industry. By the time it reached the Senate, the strategy changed. The bill went underground.

Wednesday, Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Bowling Green, kept it off the panel's agenda and refused to let people speak on it, even those who had driven hours to do so. Thursday, the bill finally came up -- and many people were back to speak -- but Guthrie called only the bill's sponsor, took a hasty vote and slipped out a side door.

Archie Fields, a retired coal trucker from Whitesburg who waited 12 hours without being heard, could have told them how hard it is to control a truck carrying such a huge load. A 20- or 30-ton load makes a truck hard to control, he said, "Now, you start talking about 60 tons? Forget it!"

Rep. Ancel Smith, D-Leburn, who sat at the committee non-hearing with some of his constituents from Letcher County, was amazed. "I've never seen a bill so bad, hated by so many people, get pushed through the legislature so hard," he said.

Of the people, by the people, for the people. It's really not a bad slogan. And a Republican said it first.