Dick Finan

        In what he calls a fight for states' rights, Ohio Senate President Dick Finan, R-Evendale, says he is willing to sacrifice nearly $20 million in federal highway funds linked to fighting drunk driving.

        Ohio is one of 31 states with a legal blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.10 and one of several vowing to fight a federal highway funding law signed Oct. 23 that calls for the BAC in every state to be lowered to 0.08 by Oct. 1, 2003.

        If states don't comply, 2 percent of their scheduled 2004 federal highway funds will be withheld. This year, that figure would be $18.2 million for Ohio. Federal highway funds are expected to grow by 1 percent each year.

        The new funding law raises the penalty by an additional 2 percent each of the following three years, reaching a maximum of 8 percent by October 2006. States would be penalized 8 percent each year after 2006, but if they lower their BAC by 2007, their withheld funds would be returned.

        When he signed the legislation, President Bill Clinton called the new standard “the biggest step to toughen drunk driving laws and reduce alcohol-related crashes since a national minimum drinking age was established a generation ago (1988).”

        Mothers Against Drunk Driving says a 170-pound man can reach 0.08 by drinking four drinks in an hour.

        “That is not social drinking,” says Andrea Rehkamp of Oxford, executive director of MADD's southwest Ohio chapter. Her son Ken was killed by a drunk driver in September 1981. “We need to do all we can to get drunk drivers off the road.”

        Other groups, including the Ohio State Highway Patrol, endorse the lower limit.

        But Mr. Finan, in his 27th year in the legislature, says he disagrees with the arguments for lowering the limit, as well as the method.

        Mr. Finan vows to assemble the General Assembly's Republican majority against any 0.08 efforts. As for the money, he says it's a small price to pay to make a make a point against what he called “federal blackmail.”

        The federal government “is acting like our big daddy. If we don't do what they want, they'll take our allowance away,” Mr. Finan says. “It's repugnant that a Republican congress would mandate what we in the states have to do.”

        The current Ohio Department of Transportation budget is $2.2 billion, with $910 million coming from federal sources, primarily gasoline excise taxes.

        ODOT officials estimate that the budget wouldn't change much by 2004, but say the main transportation funding act is up for renewal in 2004; any hit would be slight.

        Sen. Scott Oelslager, R-Canton, who chairs the senate highways and transportation committee, says he and many other Republicans will go along with Mr. Finan.

        Sen. Bruce Johnson, R-Columbus, says he is opposed to tying federal funds to state criminal legislation but that there may be compromises.

        “We could give that level a $100 fine, or call it driving under federal blackmail,” says Mr. Johnson, the Senate's third-ranking GOP member and sponsor of this year's new law that doubles penalties for drivers caught with a BAC of 0.17 or higher.

        Based on legislation introduced by then-Republican state Sen. Mike DeWine of Centerville, Ohio, in 1982 was one of the last states to lower the legal limit to 0.10. Mr. DeWine, now a U.S. senator, backed the new federal mandate for 0.08, authored by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.

        “The senator believes lowering the legal blood alcohol limit will save lives,” says Mike Dawson, Mr. DeWine's spokesman. “And states are free to make that choice to not go along.”

        Since Ohio lowered its limit in 1982, alcohol-related fatalities have dropped 46 percent. Alcohol-related accidents fell 37.6 percent during the same period.

        Mr. Finan points out that a 550-bed prison in Grafton built specifically for felony drunk drivers in 1988 had less than 50 felony DUI inmates in September. Other inmates are non-violent drug offenders.

        “What we have works, and we just need to enforce it better,” Mr. Finan says. “The lower limit would just penalize social drinkers. This really gets us on a slippery slope that might not end until we're at complete zero.”

        Bills to lower the limit have been introduced in the Ohio General Assembly in three of the last four years, but each time legislation was bottled up in committee and never made it to either the Senate or House floor.

        Other states are facing similar battles. Indiana has been at 0.10 percent since before 1973, and would be out a projected $14 million without a lower limit. But state Sen. Tom Wyss, R-Fort Wayne, introduced new legislation on Oct. 24, the third such attempt in as many years.

        “Perhaps this time, it will get some special attention,” says Jerry McCory, director of the governor's council on dangerous and impaired driving.

        In the state of Wyoming, known for its fight with the federal government in the 1980s over interstate speed limits, many officials have vowed to fight.

        “It's legislative blackmail,” says Republican Wyoming state Sen. Bill Barton, chair of the state senate's transportation and highway committee. Kentucky became the 19th state to go to a 0.08 BAC on Oct. 1. Officials there said it's too early to tell if it's made a difference in alcohol-related crashes or fatalities.

        “If all the states stood up and said to the federal government to keep your money, then that standard would be changed, guaranteed,” Mr. Finan says. “And that's what I'm trying to do here in Ohio.”

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