Ky Plakson asked us to republish this op-ed from the Nevada Current which was submitted as a republishable Creative Commons opinion essay. It looks into the unfortunate drop of a bill which would have allowed the Idaho Stop, which would have allowed bicyclists to treat a stop sign as a yield sign, and a red light as a stop sign. Often times, red lights can’t even see cyclists, bypassing them, while both red lights and stop signs can cause unnecessary wait time for those on two non motorized wheels:
Friday was deadline day – the day hundreds of good bills died at the hands of committee chairs in the legislature. Since our legislature only meets every few years and is limited to 120 days to consider 1,174 bills this year – legislators run up against a deadline. They can’t possibly examine almost 10 bills a day and pretend to make informed decisions. So, they kill bills at extreme expense to Nevadans. In the case of one bike safety bill, killed on Friday, the arbitrary deadline will cost more lives on our roads and discourage cycling for years.
What is the point of the arbitrary deadline and what are its impacts? Some say it is about efficiency.
But when we dig down, it’s extremely inefficient and contributes to ill-informed decision-making on the part of legislators, leaving Nevada in the dark ages, unable to make real progress.
Assembly Bill 168 flew through the Assembly nearly unopposed. It allows cyclists to go through stop signs and stop lights if there are no other cars. We call it Stop-As-Yield.
The bill had the backing of local transportation officials, federal experts at the Highway Administration, and even the Governor’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Board. Police agencies testified in neutral, not opposed. Why? Forty years of data in other states shows that these same safety measures save lives immediately once enacted.
The bill would not have even cost taxpayers any money.
But Friday, AB168 hit a roadblock for no reason — or at least no readily identifiable reason — other than Nevada’s arbitrary legislative time limits. Bills had to make it out of the “second house” committee by Friday, or die.
AB168 had sailed through its “first house,” passing on the Assembly floor by vote of 41 to 1.
It died at the hands of one person. The chair of each committee has the power to forward bills to the full Senate and Assembly. But they had to do it by Friday. Democratic Sen. Rochelle Nguyen, chair of the Senate Growth and Infrastructure Committee, was in that hot seat on Friday, facing a deadline with lots of bill sponsors like us struggling to meet with her to try to get past the deadline. But, she said she would not let the bike bill move forward because she has an unspecified “concern.” She has offered no additional explanation despite repeated requests.
Because of the deadline, there is no opportunity to meet with Nguyen or educate her to address her concern, whatever it is. In the 120 day session, her committee had an average of only 2 days to consider each of the 52 bills in front of them. The Senate Growth and Infrastructure Committee passed 75% of its bills, half of which they waited until the last week to act on. Ten of their bills weren’t even heard, including one from the Nevada Highway Patrol, S.B. 38, that would have prohibited and penalized road rage in Nevada. That’s something cyclists experience on the road every day and we will now need to continue to endure it because the committee failed to act on that bill which was backed by law enforcement.
These are no-brainer bills but they don’t make it past committee because of these arbitrary deadlines.
Law enforcement and bike advocates will now need to wait another two years before trying again on road rage and our Stop-As-Yield bike bill. We will go through the process all over – volunteering countless hours of time, energy and money with the possibility of unceremoniously being whacked by one committee chair who is running up against an arbitrary deadline and doesn’t have time to thoroughly consider the facts. This is extremely discouraging.
If good policy that is backed by public safety experts, works in other states, modernizes our roads, saves lives and punishes violent criminals doesn’t make it over the finish line in the Senate Growth and Infrastructure Committee, it makes me wonder what are the common factors that do get a bill over the tight finish line.
For instance, AB 527 barely made it over the finish line at the last minute in the committee. It authorizes cameras to be installed on school buses to catch drivers who blast through school bus stop signs. The video of drivers almost killing children is alarming. That’s not the kind of bill that should have to wait years either, let alone until the last minute to pass because of arbitrary deadlines. Maybe a common factor that contributes to passage of bills is alarming and sensational video that grabs legislator’s attention and is an easy sell.
Here is another common factor in bills that pass and it points to another serious problem posed by Nevada’s arbitrary deadline. Similar to the bike bill, AB 527 is already working in other states to save lives according to the proponents. Because of their time crunch, Nevada legislators are more likely to just pass things that are already working in other states, but they take a lot longer to do it and ask a lot of questions as if the bill is a novel idea or they ask no questions at all, like they did with the bike bill. Since they spend their time on bills that already work in other states, they are less likely to innovate and come up with laws specific to Nevada.
If they had more time, they would not only pass the laws that are already working to protect residents in other states but they would probably come up with great new and innovative laws for Nevadans. Legislators are sharp, well educated and probably want more time too.
With more time for lawmakers to research, Nevada could make leaps on many levels, not just transportation. But because of the arbitrary deadlines, legislators are killing bills without regard for facts or what their own local experts say. They don’t even have time to explain to their constituents.
Most bill proponents don’t speak out about this, for fear of retribution – that legislators will kill their bills just because they spoke out. It’s time to seriously ask ourselves if arbitrary deadlines are worth the consequences. Now the consequences mean years of more unnecessary deaths on our roads.
I am confident that the Stop-As-Yield bill would have been ultimately signed by the governor. Over the years thousands of good policy bills have likely died this way, never to be visited again. The result is that Nevada is at or near the top of nearly every bad list in the nation, clawing its way at the bottom behind every other state.
It’s not just bills that died on Friday. Hope for change on our roads died.
The solution is simple: longer and more frequent legislative sessions so that we pass important bills and catch up with the rest of the nation.