Alliance for a Better Minnesota: Rhetoric vs. Reality: Emmer's Attempts To Weaken Drunk Driving Penalties

Fri 03 Sep 2010 11:24:43 PM CDT : Please note that this web site will be unavailable from midnight to 4 am Central for system maintenance. If you are in the process of entering information, please ensure that you complete this prior to midnight. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Rhetoric vs. Reality: Emmer’s Attempts To Weaken Drunk Driving Penalties

Rhetoric: “Tom Emmer never introduced legislation to reduce penalties for drunk drivers."

[Emmer Truth, 7/28/2010]

Reality: On March 5, 2009, Tom Emmer introduced HF 1305. The bill decreased and delayed penalties for drunk drivers.

[Minnesota House of Representatives, HF 1305 2009, House Journal 660]

The Star Tribune wrote of the bill:

Consequences would come more slowly to Minnesotans suspected of drunken driving under a proposal advancing in the Minnesota House.

Drivers stopped on suspicion of drunken driving would not have their licenses revoked until they were convicted of impaired driving under a bill authored by Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano.

Currently, drivers face revocation soon after their arrests and before they go to court. The revocations are a minimum 90 days for failing a sobriety test, and a minimum one year for refusing a test.

Under Emmer's proposal, drivers would be subject to revocations of at least 30 and 60 days for failing or refusing tests -- but only after they're convicted or plead guilty. [Star Tribune, 03/28/2010]

Rhetoric: "At the request of local prosecutors, Rep. Emmer agreed to author their bill to reform the court system and how DWIs are handled."

[Emmer Truth, 7/28/2010]

Reality: The “prosecutors” that supported the bill were actually private attorneys. On March 26, 2009, the Minnesota House Public Safety Policy Committee held a hearing on HF 1305. The following list of people were listed as testifying on behalf of the bill:

Jeff Sheridan, Private attorney, resident of Eagan, Minnesota
Sean Stokes, Private attorney, resident of Stillwater, Minnesota
Jeremy Wachsmith, resident of Fridley, Minnesota

[Minnesota House Public Safety Policy Committee, 03/26/2009]

Rhetoric: "The legislation prepared by the prosecutors and other interested parties with the assistance of nonpartisan House research staff would have provided incentives for early and immediate prosecution of first-time offenders."

[Emmer Truth, 7/28/2010]

Reality: A leader amongst local prosecutors actually testified against the bill. On March 26, 2009, the Minnesota House Public Safety Policy Committee held a hearing on HF 1305. The following list of people were listed as testifying on behalf of the bill:

Bill Lemons, Minnesota County Attorneys Association
Lynn Goughler, Mothers Against Drunk Driving
Jean Ryan, Office of Traffic Safety, Department of Public Safety

[Minnesota House Public Safety Policy Committee, 03/26/2009]

For more, see the attached Fact Check from WCCO on April 26, 2010.

http://wcco.com/politics/tom.emmer.marty.2.1657841.html

A confrontation between the two leading Republican candidates for Minnesota governor over drunken driving has put both Tom Emmer and Marty Seifert on the defensive -- and both have shaded facts in the process.

Seifert thrust Emmer's 1981 and 1991 DWI arrests into the GOP campaign last week and got some blowback in the process. With his campaign's help, a Seifert supporter criticized Emmer in a letter that brought up the arrests and argued that Emmer tried to "substantially soften" DWI laws as a legislator.

Emmer acknowledged making mistakes when he was younger but has strongly denied any of his legislation was self-serving. He and his allies accused Seifert of dirty campaigning ahead of the state Republican Party convention this week, which will decide who moves on and who ends his bid.

A look at the claims:

SEIFERT CAMPAIGN: His campaign says Emmer pushed for weakened DWI laws in 2009, including a proposed change to privatize records related to impaired driving after 10 years from the most recent violation. "This would have had the effect of covering up Rep. Emmer's past DWIs from public scrutiny," Seifert campaign manager Kurt Daudt said in an e-mail to Republicans.

THE FACTS: Emmer's name is indisputably on the amendment that was attached to a House crime bill. The measure was removed when House-Senate negotiators worked out a compromise bill to send to Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Emmer's amendment, considered on April 20, 2009, had an effective date for violations on a driver's record "on or after" July 1, 2009. The first records wouldn't have even been sealed until 2019. It would have had no effect on Emmer's own driving record.

The letter first raising the driver's record data issue -- written by Seifert supporter Sandra Berg to fellow convention delegates and distributed at campaign expense -- referred Republicans to that amendment.

A day later, Seifert's campaign sought to amplify the criticism of Emmer's proposals with an e-mail from Daudt that directed readers to Berg's letter. But Daudt took it one step further and highlighted a separate stand-alone bill that Emmer authored with a similar goal.

The Emmer bill didn't expressly limit old offenses from being made private. But the bill was changed a few weeks later to say that it could only cover DWI incidents committed after August 2009.

The Daudt statement left out that the legislation in its final form wouldn't have touched Emmer's records.

No matter how the data would have been classified, law enforcement would still have had access to driving records beyond the 10-year window.

Emmer has run afoul of speeding, parking and seat-belt laws in recent years but hasn't had any alcohol-related offenses since 1991, according to public records.

EMMER CAMPAIGN: Emmer also sponsored a bill that would have put off revocation of a driver's license until a criminal conviction instead of the current practice of imposing sanctions at the time of an arrest. In justifying the bill, Emmer's campaign said in a widely distributed statement that the push was initiated "by local prosecutors to eliminate unnecessary costs in the court system."

THE FACTS: The state strips licenses from those who fail sobriety tests or refuse to take a test, while allowing drivers to petition for a swift civil court hearing to get a license back. The criminal process is currently handled separately.

The Minnesota County Attorneys Association, a leading voice for prosecutors at the Capitol, fought the Emmer bill, which ultimately stalled. Bill Lemons, the group's traffic safety resource prosecutor, said it represented "a giant step backward" in traffic safety. He said prosecutors he deals with at the city and county levels were universally opposed.

"You would have people who commit DWIs either refusing testing or testing above 0.08 that would have a valid driver's license and be able to continue driving," Lemons said.

Emmer referred most questions on the bill to Stillwater attorney Tom Weidner, who works for a law firm that handles prosecution for 10 municipalities in Washington County and also does criminal defense, including DWI cases.

Weidner said he first raised the issue with Emmer in 2008 but wasn't acting on behalf of the cities he serves and didn't collaborate with prosecutors outside the firm. One of Weidner's colleagues, Sean Stokes, testified on behalf of the bill, identifying himself as a prosecutor.

Weidner said he personally doesn't take many criminal defense cases and doesn't believe he was representing anyone criminally at the time he raised the issue with Emmer. A check of court records showed him handling one DWI defense case in the past year. Stokes has more frequently handled such cases.

Weidner said the change would have eased financial strains on municipalities and the courts. The state judicial council, headed by the chief justice, previously warned the administrative cases would get low-priority status to cope with ongoing budget cuts. The cuts didn't reach a level where the priority chart was put into action, a state courts spokesman said.

But Weidner said the DWI process is still flawed.

"There's a duplicative system. It's redundant and the state can't afford it. It's ridiculous to burden the court system with it," Weidner said.

Weidner contributed the maximum allowed -- $500 -- to Emmer's gubernatorial campaign last year.