Uppity Wisconsin

Santa wandered into a yard yelling ‘Have you seen my reindeer?’ But a nine year old girl knew right away it wasn’t really Santa.

“He smelled like alcohol. But I knew it wasn’t the real Santa because the real Santa doesn’t drink alcohol,” said the nine year old told WEAU TV. Her little sister had one word for Santa, “drunk.”

That story captures two issues the Wisconsin State Legislature focused on last week. Lawmakers convened an extraordinary Session and passed the most significant drunk driving legislation since .08 blood alcohol became the legal limit for drinking and driving.

And the very next day, hundreds of hunters streamed into the Capitol to ask lawmakers “where are my deer?”

The hunters pounded the Department of Natural Resources about deer management practices. Many agreed the state’s rules on “Earn a Buck” should have been overturned long before this year. Others were critical of management practices and hunting goals that should have been changed earlier to reflect several years of a declining deer population.

Wisconsin needs to more assertively use its drunk driving laws to protect the innocent rather than enabling repeat offenders.

It has to treat repeat OWI offenders the same way it deals with people who discharge firearms in public without regard for other people's safety: Lock 'em up and don't give their gun back.

It's a three-step reform of OWI laws, tougher than what is proposed by some legislators:

1. Criminalize a first offense, making it a misdemeanor, and no longer a ticket. Treat that first offense seriously. And make it clear that when it comes to OWI, two strikes and you're out.

2. Turn a second offense into a felony and make vehicle confiscation mandatory. That's how you help a repeat offender see sobriety as desirable and also how you profoundly help deter others from a first or second offense.

3. Turn one or two vehicle confiscations every month or so into very public salvage yard crushings, then auction off the other seized vehicles and turn the proceeds over to law enforcement to help finance equipment purchases, or operating expenses of check points and other anti-OWN actions.

Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk talked sense to Madison's Downtown Rotary on the subject of alcohol abuse.

Details here.