Lawmakers to tackle DUI-offender database bill

How drunk was he when the officer arrested him? Has the driver been arrested more than twice for being intoxicated behind the wheel, and was he charged appropriately? Was the driver ordered to get substance-abuse treatment?

Utah lawmakers will soon try to fix part of a bill designed to better track DUI offenders and make answers to these questions more accessible.

Gov. Mike Leavitt announced Wednesday that HB18 is on the agenda for the special session Wednesday, June 26. But the bill sponsored by Rep. Lamont Tyler, R-Salt Lake City, leaves one of the biggest questions to the DUI discussion unanswered.

Where will all this valuable information go?

Prosecutors and other parties agreed that answers to 10 data points are crucial to have in building DUI cases against drunken drivers. The Legislature passed HB18 last session, and the state court administrator's office has been gathering that data from the state's district courts since May 6.

But since March, misunderstanding about the bill has frustrated lawmakers trying to get to the bottom of DUI data problems.

Tyler and others thought HB18 took a huge step toward collecting important DUI-related facts, such as the blood alcohol level of a DUI offender and making the information accessible.

As it turns out, the state's justice court system, which hears half of the state's DUI cases, was not included in the bill. Now some justice courts won't have this information available and online until 2004.

Some lawmakers are still clearly miffed about misinformation they say they got last winter. At that time, they say Rick Schwermer, assistant court administrator and the court's point person on DUI concerns, told them the justice courts would be included in Tyler's HB18.

Tyler's new legislation attempts to order justice courts to be included in the new law. And while his amendments solve one problem, they don't address another.

As the bill is written now, it does not specify where the information ultimately goes, instead leaving it open to be deposited in "an appropriate data repository," not specifying the Department of Public Safety or the state courts or anyone specifically.

And several parties involved in solving the DUI data problem indicated there has been quite a battle over who will be responsible for this new information.