Today, February 14th, the State Senate approved legislation which would authorize a municipality to be able to adopt an ordinance to prohibit the use of a cell phone while driving a vehicle in a school zone or on school property.
Minority Leader Hollis French asked several questions to the sponsor of this bill, Anchorage Senator Kevin Meyer.
French: “What about schools that are outside the municipalities, what effect might this piece of legislation have on them and their ability to take action with respect to whatever danger may or may not exist from people on cell phones at schools, that’s one questions and two was there any consideration to making this piece of legislation a municipal wide prohibition rather than just to schools zones?”
Meyer responded to French’s first question with this.
Sen. Meyer: “This would apply to cities and municipalities and boroughs so I think that addresses the Minority Leader’s first question.”
He then responded to the second question.
Sen. Meyer: “This is a little dicey area in the sense that basically there’s a lot of ways for distracted driving, makeup, smoking a cigarette, having a dog in the car or kids in the back seat whatever, and we don’t want to go down that route with this bill, this bill was simply to address the school areas because we know there’s a lot of kids there, we know its a chaotic time and again we aren’t going to mandate it so if the schools in Fairbanks don’t want that they simply don’t pass an ordinance to do that but in Anchorage anyway based on the testimony from the Superintendent and the Mayor and Assembly, that option is something that they do want and that’s what we’re limiting just to the school area.”
The measure was approved 12 to 2 and sent to the House.