Lighting up with young kids in vehicle banned under bill
Posted on Saturday, April 8, 2006
House Bill 1046 started out as a joke to just about everyone but Bob Mathis. And now it's his turn to laugh.
The Hot Springs Democrat and reformed smoker spent much of this week in strong opposition to a bill to ban smoking in most workplaces.
It was a Mathis amendment that came close to killing that bill, says Gov. Mike Huckabee, the primary supporter of the measure.
So when Mathis filed a bill Wednesday evening to ban smoking in cars carrying young children who are restrained in car seats, a lot of people laughed. They didn't take him or his bill very seriously, Mathis says.
But he showed up Thursday morning ready to fight. He got his bill through the House Rules Committee at noon, then through the full House just before 5 p. m., representatives approving it 58-13, with 29 House members not voting.
The bill went to the Senate on Thursday night, shot through the Senate Committee on Public Health, Welfare and Labor around lunchtime Friday, and wound up on the Senate floor just before 2 p.m.
Sen. Terry Smith, D-Hot Springs, the Senate sponsor of the bill, said the measure means adults would be barred from smoking in vehicles with children in child safety seats.
"Let's do something for kids,"Smith said in a brief introduction of the bill.
Senators passed it 33-1, sending it to the governor.
Huckabee at one point Friday told Senate President Pro Tempore Jim Argue, D-Little Rock, that Mathis "was basically doing the bill as a joke and the darn thing passed both ways."
Huckabee said Friday afternoon that the bill sounded like a great idea.
"It's obviously protecting the child against secondhand smoke,"the governor said at a news conference Friday. "I think it's a great bill. I'm glad that's cleared both houses. Delighted."
HB 1046 went from laughable to laudable in under two days.
Mathis says the bill fit snugly into the already hard lobbying being done in support of the ban on smoking in the workplace. That bill, Senate Bill 19 by Sen. Tracy Steele, D-North Little Rock, drew the lobbying power of the governor, the state's chief health officer, Arkansas Children's Hospital, the Arkansas Medical Society and others.
"There was so much emphasis on the anti-smoking things, it seems like it just fit right in with everything else,"Mathis said.
Rep. Will Bond, D-Jacksonville, didn't vote on the bill when it came up in the House on Thursday.
"What happened to that bill, by the way ?"he asked Friday evening.
Bond said he didn't vote because he was too busy worrying about legislation meant to satisfy the state Supreme Court, bills that were the original reason for having the session in the first place.
"We were trying our very best to complete our work on the mandate for Lake View. To do it in a week, to show the public that we're working our hardest,"Bond said. "Things get moving rather quickly."
Mathis' bill amends a section of existing law that requires children who are under the age of 6 and weigh less than 60 pounds to ride in a "safety seat properly secured to the vehicle,"according to Arkansas Code Annotated 27-34-104. Breaking that law can mean a fine of between $ 25 and $ 100.
Mathis' bill simply bans smoking in all motor vehicles carrying children who are restrained in those seats. The bill carries a $ 25 fine, which can be waived if drivers prove they have entered a smoking cessation program.
Violating the bill would be a "primary offense,"Mathis said, meaning police could use violations of the bill to justify pulling someone over.
"And I'm tickled to death about it,"Mathis said.
He said he wasn't particularly sure how police would determine the age or weight of children while trying to enforce the law. He said his bill was meant to be enforced in the same way as A. C. A. 27-34-104.
"I don't know that the police are going to be out there with a scale weighing anybody,"Mathis said.
A spokesman for the Little Rock Police Department said he wasn't too sure on how the law would be enforced in the field, either.
"That's a good question,"said Little Rock Police Sgt. Terry Hastings.
"The law enforcement of it is something that would have to be worked out. If a parents says, 'No, they're 7,' that could be a problem."
Mathis, who is term limited, says the bill would become part of his legacy as a lawmaker. He said he regularly hassles other drivers when he sees them smoking in a car with children. Sometimes they give him dirty looks, Mathis said. Sometimes they give him "the obscene gesture."
Huckabee declined to say Friday whether he would veto any of the bills passed in this special session. Information for this article was contributed by C. S. Murphy of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
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