Bad Bill, SB-40, Fades Away

By Alicia McNally

Never have so many motorcycle enthusiasts geared up to put on the brakes.

But when SB-040 coasted through a senate committee nearly undetected, letters and phone calls from motorcycle enthusiasts around the state poured in to put it to a halt. The bill stalled for good in a House transportation committee meeting on May 11. House transportation committee member Rep. Marsha Looper, R-Calhoun said the bill provisions were extraneous.

“It looked like it was a nonprofit who was trying to, I think, pad its own special interests,” she said. “As soon as I found that out, I was really unhappy about how quickly it passed through the senate. …I started getting letters and phone calls [from COIR--Coalition Of Independent Riders] and some of the folks who were going to be negatively impacted, and that’s when I knew we were going to have to slow down this train.”

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Lois Tochtrop, D-Thornton, was aimed at diverting five percent of the Motorcycle Operator Safety (MOST) Fund, placing a tuition cap on rider education fees and restricting reimbursements for Colorado residents.

The money diverted from the MOST fund, which comes from a portion of fees for motorcycle licenses and plates, would have gone to a program created to “raise motorists’ awareness concerning safe interaction between motorcycles and other motor vehicles.” Money would have also gone towards placing signs at locations known to be hazardous to motorcycles and to promote a motorcycle awareness month.

But HB-1316 signed in March already dug into the MOST fund by $639,745 to balance the state’s budget. Rep. Mike Merrifield, D-Colorado Springs, was unaware of the budget hits to MOST and has sought to withdraw his co-sponsorship with Tochtrop on SB-040 “multiple times,” said Deborah Napier, a motorcycle lobbyist who does business as Ride Smart Motorcycling of Evergreen.

“It was a bad piece of public policy and I thought it would negatively impact motorcyclists,” said Napier, who spoke with Merrifield about the bill after it passed through the senate committee..

Also, a similar program known as Save a Life already exists using funds from the Colorado Department of Transportation, said Colorado COIR undersecretary Deb “Tiger” Chandler. Chandler initially testified against the bill in the senate committee and organized COIR members to contact the legislature before the bill reached the House committee.

“The group that was pushing for the bill and the senator who wrote it never talked to any motorcyclists in Colorado,” she said.

Chandler and other opponents to the bill think ABATE was using the legislation to get a portion of the MOST funds. Tochtrop is a member of the organization. Looper and other House transportation committee members weren’t happy when they found out it appeared ABATE was “running the show.”

“I have heartburn when nonprofits are running the show because they don’t pay corporate taxes and small businesses get negatively impacted,” Looper said.

The tuition cap portion of the bill is bad business practice because it would limit the number of operating schools in the state, and therefore limit the number of skill sets for instruction, said Napier.

“I have teenage boys. When I want them to be trained on motorcycles, I want them to be trained by the best and the brightest,” she said. “If it costs me more money to get the best and brightest on the best ranges that are going to really challenge them, then I’m going to pay for that. You get what you pay for.”

The cap would also translate into geographic locations of schools. A cap would mean only businesses in higher-populated cities like Denver could thrive, limiting the opportunity for safety courses for people in the more rural areas of the state.

“Just going from Denver to Grand Junction, you can see very different riding conditions,” Napier said. “You are going to need very different training in different areas of the state.”

Some motorcycle school owners say the bill would have benefitted nonprofits and limit the number of schools, and students.

Opponents also allege that the bill was written and submitted quietly because of its ambiguous language that implies motorcycle safety. Chandler didn’t know about the bill’s passage through the senate until she found it by chance through a search on the Colorado General Assembly’s website. She alerted Colorado COIR members and the US Defenders and was able to produce more than 3,000 letters to the legislature opposing the bill.

“One of the things [COIR] has is numbers. We have a whole division just for the patch holders, which is an untapped resource of thousands,” Chandler said. “I emailed and called every one of my COIR people, sent them all 11 names of everybody on the House transportation committee and the sponsor of the bill. That really opened a lot of eyes.”

Phone calls and emails to Tochtrop and ABATE seeking comment were not returned.

The MOST funds will go up for audit this summer, the first time it’s gone under the process in more than ten years. While the process is expensive, Looper said it’s necessary because she had a “laundry list of concerns” over how the money was being spent.

“CDOT, I felt, was not watching those funds properly,” she said. “After doing an investigation, we found they could use the funds to purchase or rent facilities and they could use it for equipment and electronics. I heard this money is not for buying property or paying for computer systems, but to go to tuition for classes.”