The State Senate’s Transportation Committee held a public hearing this week about “cell phone use while driving,” during which the committee members tried as hard as possible to avoid the subject.

Well, the first two speakers, Sharon Racusin of Norwich and Carol Rose, the executive director of the Vermont Safety Education Center, actually addressed the (supposed) topic of the day. Not only that, they (and, as it turned only they) buttressed their arguments in favor of banning cell-hone use by drivers with actual data.

The senators, by and large, were not interested in data. They seemed more receptive to the final speaker, a businessman who, out of kindness,  will not be identified here, who started off by saying, “I don’t believe the statistics.”

It would be unfair to conclude that the senators didn’t believe the statistics, only that they weren’t about to be dominated by them.

The statistics leave little doubt that a driver using a cell phone is far more likely to cause an accident, possibly injuring or killing himself and others, than a driver not using a cell phone. Allowing those statistics to dominate, then, might persuade a senator to support at least a partial ban on cell phone use, as is the law in 29 other states.

But the senators don’t want to pass such a law. Otherwise they would not have spent so much of their time asking questions about the dangers of text-messaging while behind the wheel. That’s what they want to ban by law.

In fact, the Senate has already done its part, passing S 280 last week by a 25-0 margin. Now, say the senators, it’s up to the House.

Not so fast, says the House, where most members want to go farther, also banning hand-held cell phone use and changing the seat belt law to “primary enforcement,” so that police officers could enforce it even if they had not stopped a driver for another offense.

“Highway safety really needs a comprehensive approach,” said Rep. Maxine Grad, a Fairfax Democrat who is the sponsor of the more far-reaching House bill. “We’re talking about public health and safety.”

So while the hearing itself produced almost no useful information, its very lack of substance illustrated what it was trying to hide:

–A House-Senate game of chicken;

–The bi-partisan, bi-ideological inclination of Vermonters (and not just elected officials) to prefer personal observation, anecdotes, and even gossip, where it is convenient,  to empirically testable data, as if, “I don’t believe the statistics” were the state’s motto;

–The apparently widespread if unspoken Vermont assumption that the right to be left alone in your car is comparable to the right to be left alone at home.

“It goes back to the fight (in the 1980s) over the child restraint law,” said Carol Rose of the Safety Education Center. “A kneejerk reaction of ‘don’t tell me what to do in my car.’ Or ‘I don’t want big brother telling me what to do with my kids.’”

Among those who seems to share that outlook is Gov. Jim Douglas, who in the past, according to Tom Williams of the American Automobile Association, has mentioned “personal freedom” concerns in relation to regulating what drivers may do in their cars. Just last week, Douglas worried that banning cell phones could put the state on a “slippery slope,” presumably toward outlawing coffee drinking, eating, and other common driver activities.

From a strictly legal perspective, the personal freedom concern does not exist. There is no right to drive a car on public roads. Were there a right to drive, no one would need a license. The state does not issue permits granting freedom of speech or protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Those are rights.

Permission to drive is a privilege granted by the state, which created the highway system, maintains it, repairs it, and patrols it. So the state has the authority – and arguably the responsibility — to impose any reasonable rules and regulations for using that system.

But legal/constitutional reality does not always trump culture, and apparently some Vermonters connect their automobile with their personal freedom.

Not a completely irrational connection. Especially in rural areas – which is where the car/freedom link seems strongest (seat-belt use is far lower, for instance) – a car expands one’s mobility and options, which are not unrelated to freedom. Besides, people impose their personalities onto their cars (or select the car that fits their personality). So the ‘don’t tell me what to do in my car’ attitude is understandable,  if unsupportable in law or logic.

At any rate, it seems to be carrying the day in the Senate. So does not paying attention to data, asking for little of it, and instead bringing up personal impressions.

“I find that the most (diverting activities) when I’m driving are changing the CD and dealing with hot coffee or tea,” said Senate President (and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful) Peter Shumlin of Putney.

When the senators did resort to actual evidence, they did so selectively. Sen. Phil Scott, the Montpelier Republican (seeking his party’s nomination for lieutenant governor) pointed to a study by Virginia Tech indicating that eating, changing CDs, or putting on make-up are more distracting than using a hand-held cell phone.

It was, implicitly, Douglas’s slippery slope argument, and Scott was reciting the statistics accurately. What he ignored was evidence that it is the use of electronic devices, including cell phones, which have “increased exponentially in recent years” in the words of Despina Stavrinos, a researcher at the UAB University Transportation Center, describing research prepared for the U.S. Transportation Department.

Using a cell phone, according to government data, impairs a driver as much as being drunk under Vermont law.

To be sure, the folks on the other side of this debate aren’t always guided by data, either. Rep. Grad’s bill (H 493) would ban only hand-held phones. But the government data indicate that the hands-free cell phones are no safer than the hand-held. That’s why, according to Tom Williams the Northern New England Regional Manager for the American Automobile Association, his organization does not favor the cell phone ban.

But as Grad said, a ban on hands-free calling would be harder to enforce. A cop who sees a driver with a phone to her ear has evidence. If he just sees her moving her lips, she can always claim (having of course turned off the phone as soon as she saw the bubble-gum machine behind her) that she was singing along with the radio or her I-pod.

Even if there is no right to drive there might be legitimate civil liberties concerns about changing from secondary to primary seat belt enforcement. That gives the individual cop a lot of leeway to, for instance, stop a car to check for seat-belt use just because he didn’t like the political point of view expressed by the car’s bumper stickers.

Ironically, one possible alternative came from the businessman who didn’t believe in statistics. Instead of banning cell phone use, he suggested, why not increase the penalties for drivers who cause accidents because they were on the phone? That might serve as an effective deterrent.

As it happens, though, no such bill has been introduced.

Oh, and speaking of data, here’s some about Vermont from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. If the state went to primary coverage of its seat belt law, compliance would rise – and the number of accidents would decline — enough to save insurance companies $1,316, 000, and the state treasury $498,152.

That may not be a conclusive argument on behalf of primary enforcement. But it is powerful evidence that when drivers assert their individuality by not wearing seat belts, or by talking on the phone, they cost the rest of us money. Driving is a collective, not an individual, activity.

NOTE: You could have read the following, almost word-for-word verbatim but updated just slightly, as early as Tuesday afternoon at the web site of VT Digger, with which the News Guy will be cooperating from time to time in pursuit of our mutual goal of providing Vermonters with more quality, in-depth journalism.

Any day now, the 30-member state Senate, perhaps unanimously as the House did Friday, will vote to cut the salaries of state legislators by 5 percent, thereby saving the state treasury, and hence the taxpayers, something like $105,000.

The “something like” is necessary because most legislators don’t get annual salaries. They get paid only for the weeks they are in session, so the longer the session lasts, the more they earn.

In this case, that means the longer the session lasts the more the pay cut would “save” even as the lawmakers earned more in the aggregate.

The weekly rate is now $637; 5 percent of which is $31.83, so the pay cut will bring down the total salary to $605 a week, or about $10,890 per lawmaker over the course of an 18-week session.

Multiply that $31.83 by 178 legislators, and the savings works out to $5,666 a week. Now assume the usual 18-week session. And the total saved comes to $101,983.

But that’s not all, as a famous cat once said. The two legislative leaders, the speaker of the House and the president pro-tem of the Senate, rake in bigger bucks — $704.70-a-week each, plus an annual salary of $10,895 each. Their combined weekly salary comes to $1,409. Together, their weekly pay is $25,369 for an 18-week session. Add in their combined annual salaries of $21,790, and together their total pay comes to $47,159.

Five percent of that is $2,358. Add that to the $101,983, and you get $104, 341 (rounding off to the nearest penny), which is close enough to “something like $105,000” for government work.

Not a bad piece of change, a hundred and five large. Most Vermonters could live on it comfortably for a year or even two.

On the other hand, at about one-tenth of 1 percent of the Fiscal Year 2011 projected $151 million budget deficit, its actual fiscal impact could be described as something between tiny and inconsequential, which lends some support to Rep. David Zuckerman’s contention that the value of the pay cut was political and symbolic, not budgetary.

“We’re doing this to put out there that we’re taking the pain,” he said. “It works well from a political perspective.”

Zuckerman, a Burlington Progressive, was the only legislator to express outright opposition to the pay cut, though it wasn’t very strong; he voted for the 70-page Budget Adjustment bill (H.534) in which the salary reduction was one small sentence.

Another lawmaker, Democrat Kenneth W. Atkins of Winooski, said he would not oppose the pay cut because state workers had just accepted lower pay. But he agreed with Zuckerman that lawmakers “earn less than the average working wage in Vermont,” and are by no means overpaid. He referred to a 2004 study on legislative pay by the Snelling Center which concluded that lawmakers should get higher salaries.

Pointing out that legislators get no health insurance or retirement plan, Atkins also refuted what he called the common misconception that they get subsidies for using their home phones, or free auto registration and license plates.

“Not true,” he said. “No one is here for the money.”

Whenever a Legislative session drags on for a week or two, letters to the editor and news reporters suggest that lawmakers want the extra weeks for extra pay.

Besides, senators and representatives get more than their salaries. They also get expense allowances for travel, meals, and lodging. Aren’t these payments also part of their total compensation?

No. Economists consider salary, deferred benefits, stock options, and an employer’s share of fringe benefits (health care, retirement plans) to be compensation. Reimbursement for expenses, whether in an itemized system or as per diem allowances, are not part of compensation.

Legislators get per diem allowances, and they do not set their own rates. The federal government does. Nathan Lavery of the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office said the state uses the U.S. General Service Administration’s travel expense rates. Those rates are computed for each locality, Lavery said, so that, for instance, Vermont legislators don’t get Manhattan hotel rate reimbursements for staying in Montpelier hotels.

For this year, the meals and lodgings reimbursement rates were increased from $54 and $93 a day to $61 and $101, respectively. The mileage rate, on the other hand, reflecting lower gasoline prices, fell from 55 to 50 cents per mile. A lawmaker could easily rack up more than his or her salary, in lodgings ($9,000 or more), and food ($4,590). Legislators pass almost all that money to hotels and restaurants. A few lawmakers may end up with a small surplus from their expense allowances, and a few probably spend more than the per diem allotment.

Even for the most frugal, the reimbursement rates don’t appear to provide an opportunity for lawmakers to rake in big bucks. Legislators get a special $85-a-night rate at the Capitol Plaza Hotel near the Statehouse. Add in the 9 percent rooms and meals tax and their total is $92.65, giving them an $8.35-a-night “profit.”

That’s probably soaked up by the unpaid phone calls, car trips, restaurant meals and occasional hotel bills the lawmakers spend – and for which they are not compensated – while the Legislature is not in session. Not to mention the time that could be spent doing something more immediately useful to them, like making money. They get a $118 per diem for official legislative meetings (which is subject to the 5 percent cut), but only if they actually attend them (and the Legislative Council checks).

While no one can prove or disprove that members of the Legislature are “in it for the money,” it does seem that anyone who is in it for the money lacks either the incentive or the intelligence or both to deserve getting elected. Putting the same thought and effort into another enterprise would likely prove far more remunerative. No doubt over the years a few lawmakers have plotted their travels and meals to cadge a few extra dollars from the system. For the most part, they could have earned more putting that time and effort into honest work.

There are also, of course, what might be called the secondary economic benefits of serving in the Legislature, almost all of whose members earn most of their money in other pursuits. A lawyer, accountant, or other professional can make contacts and get publicity that can help bring in clients and customers. The business executive who lobbies a legislator today might offer him or her a high-salary position tomorrow.

To use the office for personal gain, then, the smart lawmaker will stick to doing the job right, and not spend time trying to eke a few extra bucks out of the rooms and meals allowance.

Does Vermont coddle the Middle Class?

Gov. Jim Douglas thinks so, and he may have a point.

No, the governor didn’t use those words. But take a look at his budget message of last Tuesday and some of his other recent proposals.

“Maintaining coverage for the greatest number of people will mean scaling back benefits for some,” he said in his speech to the Legislature.

At that point, he was talking about health benefits. But the same theme echoed throughout the speech: In order to protect the services and subsidies that go to the poor, Vermont would have to cut back on those services and subsidies for the not-so-poor.

And while some of those not-so-poor are very low income, many are not. In both tax and social policy, Vermont provides benefits to thousands of people whose earnings are close to – or higher than –the middle of the income spectrum.

For instance, a family of four can get health care assistance in Vermont if its total income is under $68,400. That’s way above the poverty line for a family of four ($21,834 in 2008). It’s even higher than the median household income in the state (about $66,000) before the Recession started.

Then again, it’s less than the median income in Vermont for a family of four. That’s was $71,382 a couple of years ago, one of the highest in the country. Still, by any reasonable definition, a family of four living on $68,000 a year is neither poor nor low income. It’s right there in the middle.

Meaning, at least according to conventional assumptions, it ought to be able to support itself. After all, this is America, the richest country in the world and the one that created mass affluence. Shouldn’t moderately affluent people pay their own bills?

Nor is health care the only example. A large family – two parents and six children – can get state help winterizing its home if its income is higher than $74,000. In all, Douglass said, “nearly one-third of our population receives services from the State… Since the beginning of the decade, overall spending for human services has more than doubled – a growth rate of three-and-a-half times inflation.”

Conventional assumptions, to be sure, ought to be challenged from time to time. As it happens, most Americans no longer live better than their counterparts in many other countries, partly because those counterparts don’t have to pay separately for health care at all. And in this country, health care has gotten so expensive that it could pose a heavy burden even on the moderately affluent.

Still, the case made by Douglas and other economic conservatives is not frivolous. If nothing else, they are asking a legitimate question: In a culture that values (or at least claims to) self-reliance, where should the line be drawn between personal and social responsibility?

Despite the claims of some of his liberal critics, Douglas remains a moderate, not one of those ultra-conservative Republicans who believe – as Newt Gingrich proclaimed in 1995 as he prepared to become Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives – that government ought to do little more than defend the country and print money. Douglas proposed expanding several state programs in his speech, and did not call for abolishing any.

But he does want to save money, mostly by cutting services to middle-income and even some affluent people and by raising their taxes.

Again, he didn’t put it precisely that way. No sane politician is going to say, “I want to raise the taxes of middle-income and upper-middle-income homeowners.”

But that would be the result of Douglas’s plan to alter the “income sensitivity” provisions of the statewide school property tax. Instead of all households with income under $90,000 protected from paying more than 1.8 percent of their incomes on that tax, those earning between $60,000 and $75,000 could pay as much as 2.25 percent; for households between $75,00 and $90,000, the limit would rise to 3.5 percent.

Of course that might not be a tax increase if local school districts froze their budgets, as Douglas proposed. But they don’t seem likely to follow his advice. Either way, families who earn $90,000 a year, even big families, are in the top 20 percent of all earners. By any definition they are affluent. Why do their property taxes need to be subsidized?

Democrats claim that income sensitivity is not a subsidy, but a method of linking taxes to each taxpayer’s “ability to pay.” It may be that, but it is also a subsidy; whatever the homeowner saves on property taxes because of income sensitivity is made up for by funds from other taxes, mostly the income tax.

And that tax, in turn, is disproportionately paid by upper-income earners. When economic conservatives, including Douglas, complain that Vermont is a high-tax state, what they really object to is that it’s a high-tax state for high earners. Lower and middle-income Vermonters – even those up near the $90,000 range – pay little if any more in state and local taxes than do their counterparts in many other states, especially in the Northeast. But because the state tax structure is relatively progressive, the wealthy pay a bit more. Among other things, they are subsidizing, through income sensitivity, the affluent as well as the poor.

Unless income sensitivity is altered, then, there might be renewed pressure to raise taxes on the very wealthy to help make up for what the merely affluent don’t pay in property taxes. Douglas adamantly opposes any such tax increase. In fact, he wants last year’s small hike in taxes on the wealthy rolled back.

This debate, then, is, among others things, a class conflict. Not the traditional version in which the workers with their pitchforks storm the banks. Not even the more recent brand in which the bankers with their lobbyists and their pseudo-think tanks storm the government and the media.

This class conflict is more nuanced, more interesting, and perhaps necessary. It’s all about precisely who qualifies as “middle class,” who in that middle class deserves tax breaks and government services, and who will pay for them. A healthy debate as long as it does not degenerate into a situation in which everybody is trying to protect his/her own government benefits and tax breaks at the expense of everyone else.

It would be irresponsible to leave this discussion without noting that some of Douglas’s proposed budget cuts would hurt the very poor. For instance, he noted that Vermont’s Medicaid system allows an “unlimited number of emergency room visits” by recipients. “Capping ER visits that do not result in hospitalization at 12 per year will bring Vermont more in line with peer states – saving money to preserve this benefit for everyone in the system,” he said.

No doubt it would. Not only that, but it’s a good bet that some of those emergency room visits, being unlimited and free, aren’t really necessary. But those unlimited visits also probably help explain why Vermont is regularly designated the healthiest state in the union. The most obvious consequence of reducing health care services for the poor is that the poor will become less healthy.