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.

Forenote: There will be an extra News Guy posting tomorrow, Thursday (as well as the usual Friday posting), along with an announcement about some new developments at the web site which we trust will be received favorably.

Actually, it might be more accurate to consider today’s post the “extra” one. Tomorrow’s will have more news; what follows is a bit of musing on Vermont and consistency.

Back in the day, Sen. Russell Long, the Louisiana Democrat who chaired the Senate Finance Committee for a century or so, used to sum up the average person’s attitude toward taxation as follows: “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree.”

Bad poetry, but good political analysis.

As Vermonters are now learning (and proving), the same phenomenon applies to spending. From Gov. Jim Douglas on down, the attitude of the body politic is: “Cut the other guy to the bone, but leave my favorite program alone.”

Poetry no better. Perspicacity identical.

Exhibit A comes right from the top. For years, Vermont farmers and woodland owners have gotten a tax break thanks to the “current use” tax assessment. Nobody opposes this policy in principle; it’s kept thousands of acres open and green by removing an incentive for landowners to sell to developers.

But it’s also expensive.

According to whom?

According to the Douglas Administration, whose tax commissioner, Richard Westman, just a few weeks ago identified the Current Use policy as one reason everybody else’s property taxes keep rising.

As it happens, over the last year or so, the various “stakeholders” of Current Use – farmers, foresters, environmentalists, local officials – have been meeting to try to figure out a way to get a little more money for the state treasury without seriously diminishing the advantage to landowners.

And they succeeded. Or at least most of them thought they did, and they presented the Legislature with a plan that would bring in another $1.6 million in revenue.

Oh, no, said the Douglas Administration, represented in this case by Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Jonathan Wood. Yeah, we need money. We’re $150 million in the hole. But we don’t want money from these landowners because…well, because it’s a good program, Wood said.

Yeah, but they’re all good programs. Maybe what he really meant was—These are our friends.

Then there was the Governor’s major power play to get a special Legislative Board to approve spending several more million dollars for one of his pet programs even as he insists on cutting almost everything else. This was the cap-raising of the Vermont Economic Growth Incentive . (See VEGI Burgher,” the January 13 post)

Assume for the sake of discussion that this, too, is a valuable program. But it never seemed to have occurred to Douglas to apply the same standards to it that he wants imposed on other agencies—spend less than you have in your budget this year because we all have to tighten our belts.

Do not suppose, though, that this “cut everybody but me” attitude is limited to Douglas and his fellow Republicans. At a Democratic fund-raiser a couple of weeks ago, former Gov. Howard Dean scolded lawmakers who might be willing to consider reducing the budget of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board.

“We need that program,” Dean said. “It is the perfect public-private partnership.”

It may be, and like Current Use, it has been useful as a conservation mechanism. But it couldn’t survive a year or two with a little less money?

The liberals are somewhat less inconsistent than the conservatives here, because some of them openly call for some targeted and temporary tax increases to help the state over its $150 million budget shortfall. But everybody agrees that programs will have to be cut.

Just not their favorites.

OK, some folks are willing to take less. State workers took a three percent pay cut. Yes, they did it under pressure and to avoid more layoffs, so it wasn’t just an act of noble sacrifice. But it was a sacrifice, as was the five percent pay cut taken by their bosses, the “exempt” state workers who earn more than $60,000 a year. The Stowe teachers agreed to give up the 5.5 percent pay hike they had negotiated for this year.

But these seem to be the exceptions. The default position for Vermont advocates left and right remains a firm and forthright conviction to cut spending. On everybody else’s programs.

Aftnote: Because the News Guy rarely misses an opportunity to ridicule or insult the Burlington Free Press when it deserves ridicule or insult, it’s only fair that the paper’s triumphs be recognized. Last Sunday alone it had three pieces of first-rate journalism: Sam Hemingway’s lead story about tritium contamination at nuclear plants nationwide, Nancy Remsen’s story about the potential impacts of state budget cuts, Candace Page’s fascinating account of niche marketing agriculture in Vermont.

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.