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Making Sausage and Passing Legislation…. House Bill 1399, a bill to redefine the definition of a motorcycle passed the full House on October 18 but not before four amendments were offered to the bill. Three of those amendments were offered by Representative Dan Frankel, one would have restored the mandatory helmet law for all riders. Another would have required special motorcycle plates for any person under 20 years of age. They would have been required to have a registration plate that was visibly unique in both color and design from the regular motorcycle plate. These plates would have aided police departments in identifying riders of motorcycles under 21 and therefore subjected to wearing a helmet. The third Frankel amendment would have required a motorcycle operator or passenger to show proof of health insurance and long term care insurance.
An additional amendment offered by Representative Shapiro prohibited the use of interactive wireless communication devices. All of these amendments were objected to by ABATE of PA and after a brief but effective phone in lobbying effort by ABATE members, both Representative Frankel and Shapiro withdrew their amendments.
However, Representative Frankel went on record that he plans to introduce a resolution to require a new study to determine the effects of the helmet modification since its enactment in 2003. Again, ABATE went pro-active and sent a letter to all Members of the House stating that while we were not intrinsically opposed to the idea, we believed that the issue was adequately addressed by the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee Report (s) that were released in 2006 and 2008 and that there had been nothing new that would justify revisiting the issue.
In December the Senate voted on House Bill 1399 but not before we once again faced some challenges. Senator Hughes added an amendment to the bill that extended the use of automated red light enforcement systems in first class cities. After that amendment was added to the bill, the Senate passed it by a vote of 36-14. The bill was returned to the House for concurrence in Senate amendments.
This created a monumental problem. Our prime sponsor of HB 1399, Representative Scott Perry was opposed to the Senate amendment and proposed two amendments of his own. The first amendment was to remove the Senate amendment which quite frankly was not going to happen. The Govenor's office and the House Transportation Committee made it clear to me that the amendment would remain on the bill and that the Governor wanted this legislation to pass as amended in the Senate. The red light provision was set to expire on December 31 so that the passing of the bill as it was amended had to happen now in order to extend the red light enforcement.
The second amendment proposed by Perry was to remove the motorcycle language from the bill which would have put us back to square one and had us start all over again. We were opposed to both of the amendments.
The only thing left to do was to ask Representative Perry to withdraw his name from the bill. I reluctantly asked him to do just that. Together we had worked diligently to get this legislation passed and it was difficult to see him have to step back and not get the credit he is due for making the motorcycle modifications possible. But, at my request Representative Perry withdrew his name from the bill.
There was a lot of debate on the House floor regarding the amendment but in the end thanks to Representative Dick Stevenson for speaking up and reminding everyone the importance of this bill as it related to the motorcycling community, the House concurred in Senate amendments 149-48. The bill was approved by the Govenor on December 22, 2011 and signed into law.
This bill is a classic case of why sometimes legislators that support a particular bill will refuse to cosponsor it because you never know what can happen down the road that can alter the true intent of the original bill. Hence comes the saying that two things you never want to see being made is sausage and legislation.
This one was a dog fight from beginning to end. When you consider the House amendments by Frankel and Shapiro, and then the Senate amendment by Senator Hughes and in the end Representative Perry withdrawing his name from the bill, you can see the difficulty in getting a bill through the Legislature and to the Governor for his signature.
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