I’m certainly not in the states-rights crowd, but I’ve always resented the federal government’s threat to withholding funding to achieve legislative ends only marginally related to the funding in question. It was the driving force behind our nation’s draconian drinking-age laws that were passed in the name of greater social good and have shown little concrete for it.
That said, Massachusetts should not need the threat of reduced highway construction money to pass a meaningful drunk driving law. The state has the highest drunk-driving-related death rate in the country, and while the responsibility lies on individual drivers who drive drunk and while it’s difficult to change a general culture, something can be done to make individuals act differently. Part of this will undoubtedly involve late-night public transportation; the MBTA shouldn’t be releasing press releases with defensive assetions that its Night Owl buses aren’t just for partiers, it should be thinking of how to get more partiers off the road. As I’ve said before, the costs of public transit aren’t simply internal to the MBTA’s books, but touches on wider social costs of not providing transportation. Alongside transit, though, the legislature surely needs to change laws to match those of other states. Why are the state Dems allowing this to be a Republican-led issue anyway?
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