Awards designed & created by Jasmine A. Platt, DMV STaR Team

 

2018 Legislative session is in the books!          

From Governmental Affairs Ramón Hobdey-Sánchez:

The 2018 legislative session officially adjourned sine die Wednesday evening (3/28/18), bringing an end to an 11 ½ week, 80-day session. This proved to be an impactful session for transportation and transportation policy across the state. In order to provide some perspective, here are some numbers to process:

204 Senate proposals
425 House proposals
629 total bills printed (that’s basically 8 bills a day including weekends!)

404:
total proposals passed or adopted

78: total # of proposals analyzed by ITD
50: # of DMV proposals (64% of all bills ITD analyzed)

This may not have been the most robust year of all-time when it comes to transportation legislation analysis, but it surely wasn’t light! Here are a couple bills worth highlighting.  As we know, SAFETY is of paramount significance to the department and there are two specific actions that directly impacted this arena.  The first, was the passage of H551 – Ignition Interlock Devices – this law mandates that all 1st time DUI offenders must have an ignition interlock device installed in their vehicle for a year.  AAA and Sen. Burgoyne led this effort, but ITD provided analysis, input and statistics. Per AAA, on average, a person drives drunk 75-80 times before ever being pulled over and “caught.”  This statistic has stood out in my mind all session and is really something to think about.  So, the big picture here, is that DUI policy in the State of Idaho experienced a dramatic shift this year. 

Secondly, ITD’s FY19 Appropriation (S1367) included a line item for $500,000 in ongoing funding for the “Alive at 25 Program” AND behavioral education and promotion via our very own Office of Highway Safety.  On first glance, this does not seem like much.  I mean, our entire annual appropriation is over $700 million, so what’s $500K. But, this is going to directly impact the work of OHS. Our OHS friends will be the first to share crash statistics with you and will surely point out that human behavior is almost always at play.  These monies will be used to specially target different groups of people in an effort to help change and influence behaviors in our community.

The session was also defined by military vehicles and airplanes!  S1367 included $2M for the department to replace an aging 45 year-old Cessna with a brand new single-engine turboprop powered plane. For military vehicles, H506 as amended in the Senate, was the proposal that finally made its way to the Governor’s desk. Many of you are most likely not familiar with this issue, but I am here to tell you that registering military vehicles for use on our public roads and highways is apparently one of the most important transportation issues ever (insert sarcasm here). H506 taught many of us lessons of all different types and will likely be something we joke and tease about for years to come. 

Navigating the legislative session is truly a total TEAM effort and involves work, effort and collaboration from the highway districts, human resources, ETS, DMV, finance and budget.  There are truly too many people to name and thank; however, there were a few standouts from this particular session:

Lisa West: Sr. Financial Specialist, FP&A, The state’s new plane – S1367
Brendan Floyd: Program Specialist, DMV PPM, Military vehicles – H506
Joel Drake: Chief Financial Officer, FP&A, $500K in ongoing OHS funding – S1327  
Amy Smith: Business Analyst, DMV PPM, DMV bill coordinator for 50 proposals

Things to look for moving forward are our interim committees and legislation implementation.  The legislature may be closed for business, but much of the work is still left to do.  The majority of passed legislation has an implementation date of July 1, 2018, so we will vehemently be working toward that date while also simultaneously planning and preparing for the 2019 legislative session.

Now is the time when teams and groups come together to not only reflect on what has occurred over the last 3 months, but also to strategize and prepare for what we want to accomplish next year. Additionally, SCR130 has us conducting a very significant negotiated rulemaking and if you didn’t already know, the trucking industry is kind of a big deal in this state, so it should present all types of challenges and opportunities. If anyone has any questions, interests or curiosities, please feel free to reach out to Mollie McCarty, Matthew Moore or myself, as we all love to “talk shop.”

Published 04-06-18